Context:
India and France are collaborating on Kaziranga Project. Agence Française de Développement (AFD) of France has committed funding of €80.2 million for a 10-year period, between 2014-2024.
Relevance:
GS II: Environment and Ecology
Dimensions of the Article:
- What is Kaziranga Project?
- Kaziranga National Park
What is Kaziranga Project?
- The Kaziranga project is a part of a larger Assam Project on Forest and Biodiversity Conservation (APFBC).
- The Assam government, with the support of AFD, launched the APFBC in 2012, to restore forest ecosystems, protect wildlife and enhance the livelihood of the forest-dependent communities.
- The project conceptualised the reforestation of 33,500 hectares of land and the training of 10,000 community members in alternate livelihoods by 2024
Kaziranga National Park
- Kaziranga National Park is a national park in the Golaghat, Karbi Anglong and Nagaon districts of the state of Assam.
- It is a World Heritage Site and hosts two-thirds of the world’s great one-horned rhinoceroses.
- Kaziranga is recognized as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International for conservation of avifaunal species.
- Along with the iconic Greater one-horned rhinoceros, the park is the breeding ground of elephants, wild water buffalo, and swamp deer.
- Over the time, the tiger population has also increased in Kaziranga, and that’s the reason why Kaziranga was declared as Tiger Reserve in 2006.
- Due to the difference in altitude between the eastern and western areas of the park, here one can see mainly four types of vegetation’ like alluvial inundated grasslands, alluvial savanna woodlands, tropical moist mixed deciduous forests, and tropical semi-evergreen forests.
- Kaziranga is a vast expanse of tall elephant grass, marshland, and dense tropical moist broadleaf forests, criss-crossed by four major rivers, including the Brahmaputra, and the park includes numerous small bodies of water.
- Kaziranga has flat expanses of fertile, alluvial soil, formed by erosion and silt deposition by the River Brahmaputra.
- The history of Kaziranga as a protected area can be traced back to 1904 when the wife of the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon visited the area and persuaded to take measures to protect rhinoceros in the area.
-Source: The Hindu
