1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

The director of Kaziranga National Park, Mr. S. N. Buragohain, rides an elephant to the scene of a crime: the night before, poachers killed an endangered Indian one-horned rhino and sawed off its horn to sell on the black market for use in traditional Chinese medicine. The quest for its two-to-five pound (1-2.25 kg) horn has taken down about 650 of the beasts in Kaziranga over the past 40 years- and it turned this jungle into a killing field during the 1980s and '90s. The carnage peaked in 1992, when 48 rhinos were slaughtered, prompting officials to call in the Indian Army to beef up the park's forces. It's again exploded into an all-out war, with park guards given permission to shoot poachers on sight.