Assam Hosts Nearly 80% of World's Greater One-Horned Rhinos as India Launches Project Rhino

Key facts

• Assam shelters nearly 80% of the world's greater one-horned rhinoceros, with the global population estimated at 4,075 — 3,323 in India and 752 in Nepal.
• Kaziranga National Park alone holds more than 2,600 greater one-horned rhinos of the global population.
• On World Rhino Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Project Rhino, a conservation initiative providing financial and technical support to states harbouring the greater one-horned rhinoceros.
• Of the five surviving rhino species, three — black, Sumatran and Javan rhinos — are critically endangered on the IUCN list; the greater one-horned rhino is vulnerable and the white rhino is near threatened.
• The International Rhino Foundation's State of the Rhino Report 2026 recorded zero known poaching of greater one-horned rhinos in both Assam and Nepal in 2025.
• Assam achieved its first zero-poaching year since the 1970s in 2022 and repeated it in 2025, after recording nearly 30 poached rhinos in a single year in the mid-2010s.
• Manas National Park has recorded zero poaching of rhinos and tigers for three consecutive years, and rhinos translocated from Kaziranga have repopulated Manas and Orang National Parks.
• Rhinos have returned or been protected in parts of Bihar and West Bengal, and reintroduction in Dudhwa, Uttar Pradesh, is described as creating history.