An exploding human population continually threatens to encroach on land reserved for wild animals.Public money to fund the parks is frequently siphoned off by corrupt politicians, leaving the parks gasping for the bare essentials, such as fuel for the jeeps in which the gamekeepers patrol Salaries can remain unpaid for months. The ancient, disintegrating off-road cars were augmented by neat little Suzukis Motor boats were bought for patrolling during the monsoon Much money has been spent on infrastructure. Often there has been no money to maintain or fuel the new cars and boats. But the morale of the park’s 500 staff, which even amid the crisis two years ago was strikingly high, remained impressive.Now Kaziranga is almost back to square one.Divisional Forest Officer P S Das spelt out the scale of Kaziranga’s new disaster.

This is one of the most important and also one of the most successful wildlife reserves in the Indian subcontinent.But thanks to this year’s floods, which continued for three months, Kaziranga has effectively been turned inside out. Beyond, other lorries had stopped, and the huge animal’s prehistoric form was silhouetted in their headlamps Exhaust fumes swirled around it It was a vision out of an apocalypse. A few minutes later the animal trundled off the road and into the trees on the verge and we continued on our way.The rhinoceros on the road is an emblem of the immense crisis Kaziranga National Park confronts. The pride of the park – the 1,164 rhinos, 80 or so tigers, the thousands of swamp deer and hog deer on which the tigers prey, the water buffalo – all have been forced to flee.Within the park, much of the infrastructure painstakingly put together by 500 guards and rangers has been smashed to pieces or washed away: lookout camps, wooden bridges, earth platforms constructed to give the animals a place to retreat – all battered or broken.Kaziranga’s tragedy is particularly poignant because this is a park that has been bucking the odds.

Dedicated work by the staff in the national park has brought them back from the brink: at the last count Kaziranga had 1,164 great Indian one-horned rhinos, about 70 per cent of the species’ world population. But, since the recent disastrous flood that left the park under 18 feet of water, there is no place left in the park for a rhinoceros to stand; and there is no food left for them to eat. Those that have not drowned or been swept away have fled.
I was being driven along National Highway 37, the road that skirts the south of the national park, when I first set eyes on one of these giant refugees. We rounded a corner and a big lorry was parked in the middle of the road. Not stalled: parked, with deliberation.No more than 30ft ahead was a large rhinoceros, standing in the middle of the road. The more right-wing among them have every intention of pressing on, because their supporters are keen and because they believe they will mop up votes More moderate ones have their doubts.. “A few moments ago I signed stop-gap legislation to keep the government open and running at the start of the new fiscal year,” he told reporters.”By failing to meet its most basic governing responsibilities, the Republican majority in Congress has its priorities wrong: partisanship over progress, politics over people,” said Mr Clinton, in what is becoming a familiar refrain.Republicans were defensive on television talk shows yesterday, scrambling to regain control of a process that seems to be slipping away from them.