The Better India · 5 hours ago

From ‘Endangered’ to ‘Exemplar’: the Story Behind Assam’s Manas National Park

When insurgency turned Manas National Park into a war zone in the 1990s, rhinos were slaughtered, forests cleared, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site declared "in danger," Dr. Bibhuti Prasad Lahkar chose to stay. While bullets echoed through the grasslands and poachers roamed freely, he quietly built bridges between frightened communities and a ravaged landscape, training surrendered insurgents as conservation guides and helping villagers plant lemon bio-fences that would one day protect both elephants and livelihoods. "The last wild rhino was killed in 2002," he recalls of those dark years, yet his persistence - mentoring locals, studying grasslands, radio-collaring elephants - helped weave a safety net beneath a collapsing ecosystem. Today, Manas has reclaimed its World Heritage status, its tigers and rhinos returning to lands where they were nearly erased, a testament to what unfolds when one person refuses to abandon a place others have written off. Rebuilding a forest, Lahkar knows, isn't a moment of success but a long, ongoing commitment - and he's still there, three decades in, still planting.