Guwahati, August 26: Dr Sonali Ghosh, IFS, Chief Conservator of Forest (Research Education and Working Plan) has been transferred and posted as the Field Director of Kaziranga National Park with effect for September 1, 2023 on superannuation of the incumbent Field Director Jatindra Sharma, thereby becoming the first woman Field Director of the renowned abode of one-horned rhinoceros.
The government notification in this regard was signed by Md Farouk Alam, Commissioner and Secretary to the State’s Environment and Forest Department, said.
More than a century after a woman played a key role in the birth of Kaziranga National Park, a woman, Sonali Ghosh, would be in the helm of affairs in the Park that boasts of over 2600 rhinos as per the last census carried out in March 2022.
Forest officials said Dr Ghosh would become the first woman to hold charge as the head of the 118-year-old Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve, which is also designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985.
Regarded as one of the world’s conservation success stories, the 1,355 sq. km tiger reserve is estimated to have 2,613 greater one-horned rhinos (March 2022 census). It also boasts of a high tiger density.
It may be mentioned that it was Baroness Mary Victoria Leiter Curzon, the wife of the then Viceroy, Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, is said to have played a key role in the birth of Kaziranga after she visited the area in 1904.
She asked her husband to take necessary steps on the advice of Balaram Hazarika alias Nigona Shikari, an animal tracker who had shown her around and underlined the need to save the rhinos from being wiped out by game hunters and poachers. Kaziranga got the Proposed Reserved Forest tag on June 1, 1905.