A week-long celebration will be held from February 11, 2005 to mark the centenary of Kaziranga National Park.
North East News Agency

COME February and the world famous Kaziranga National Park, best known of the abode of one-horned rhinos will be agog with different kind of activities apart from its quota of tourists, both international and domestic. The Centenary Celebration Committee of the Kaziranga National Park has recently chalked out a week-long centenary celebration from February 11 next year with great enthusiasm and fanfare. The committee, which is being headed by Assam Forest and Environment Minister Pradyut Bordoloi, has planned a series of deliberations, debates, studies, exhibitions and exchanges with Kaziranga as the theme for conservation of the distinctive biodiversity unique to the North-East, to mark the occasion. Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gigoi has recently inaugurated a web site www. Kaziranga100.com with a view to attract a large number of tourists for the occasion. The organisers are hopeful that a large number of foreign tourists will visit the national park during the centenary celebrations along with domestic tourists.

Situated in Jorhat & Nawgaon districts, the Kaziranga National Park which was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1985, extends over an area of 430 sq. km. It is surrounded by the Mikir Hills on the South and Brahmaputra River on the north. The park, 217 km away from the capital of Assam, was declared a Wildlife sanctuary in 1950 and accorded the status of a National Park in 1974.

The park divided into central, eastern and western sectors consists of semi- evergreen forested highlands, rivulets, marshes and extensive plains covered with tall elephant grass up to 6 meters high.

The park is famous for one horned Indian rhinoceros which has a height of over two meters and weigh more than two tones. The area was declared a game reserve in 1908 to save the one-horned rhinos. The sanctuary was thrown open to visitors in 1938. The total number of rhinoceros in the park is more than thousand which is 70 percent of the total population of this species in the country.

All this was due to the fact that   in Kaziranga, grasslands predominate its flood plain ecosystem which is ideal for survival of many threatened wildlife species. Apart from the great Indian one-horned Rhinoceros, Kaziranga also has 1,100 concentration of Asiatic wild elephants, around 1,500 Asiatic wild buffaloes, approximately 90 Royal Bengal Tigers and 500 eastern swamp deer and more than 700 species of birds.

The park also has elephants, swamp or wild buffalo (Over 70% of the world population), swamp deer, hog deer, barking deer, sambar/ Hoolock gibbon, pythons, civet cat, wild boar and tigers. There is a rich variety of fresh water fowls, over 450 species of woodland and grassland birds of which 18 species are globally threatened. Birds like the egrets, pond herons, river tern, black necked storks, pelican, partridges, Bengal florican stork, pied horn bill, fishing eagle are found in abundance. The river here has the gharial (fish eating crocodile) and dolphins.

March - April is best for animal viewing. Trained elephants are available as mounts for seeing the rhinos from close range. Jeep drives are also available. The rides at dawn are best to see the animals. There are three road routes inside the park. The observation towers are situated at Sohola, Mihimukh, Kathpara, Foliamari and Harmoti. Other attractions are the coffee and rubber plantations of the nearby Karbi Anglong and the tea gardens of Hatikhuli, Methoni and others.