Rescuing one-horned rhino calves and conserving India’s ecosystems

This unique, supportive family creates an exponentially greater impact than they would by themselves. Like Chandra and Kanai growing up together and helping others, IFAW and WTI working together are able to make an even bigger impact than working separately.

Since its founding in 2002, CWRC has taken in three to 16 rhino calves every year. Once of age and able to survive on their own, they are released back to the wild. Some are released with radio collars, providing valuable information on their movement patterns, which allow IFAW and WTI to better understand and protect these wild populations.

At the turn of the 20th century, only 400 greater one-horned rhinos remained in the world. In March 2025, it was estimated that more than 4,000 rhinos were alive and well, with 2,613 as of 2022 within the Kaziranga National Park, home to IFAW-WTI's CWRC. The Masa Forest, the soft-release site for many of these rehabilitated rhinos, boasts half of its population thanks to CWRC's efforts. And today, they are thriving, raising calves of their own. This same project has also helped rhino populations in Greater Manas National Park return and rebound.

As a keystone species, rhinos are landscapers of the meadows and plains on which they tread. By wallowing in shallow watering holes, eating grasses, and spreading seeds, they engineer the landscape around them simply by living their lives.

But their environment is under threat from invasive plant species, which they do not eat, and the encroachment of humans. Rhino habitat is being converted for cattle grazing and housing, fragmenting the landscapes where rhinos once roamed freely. Posing an additional challenge is the hunting of rhinos for the ivory trade.

The IUCN lists the greater one-horned rhino as vulnerable due to all of these threats against them, but with IFAW and WTI working together, conservation efforts are yielding results. Anti-poaching campaigns, community engagement, and rescue and rehabilitation efforts all contribute to raising the rhino population. Chandra and Kanai would not be here without them, and they would not have the life they lead without each other. These two young rhinos will be back in the wild one day, healing the landscape with every step they take, creating a brighter future for their species and the planet.