KATHMANDU: The reviving population of the one-horned rhino in Chitwan and Bardiya has made the conservationists in the United Kingdom more enthusiastic.

Experts discussing Nepal's one-horned rhino at a seminar at the London Zoo also expressed happiness over the authorities' all-out efforts to contain the rhino poaching in the recent times.

Marking the Nepal Nature Conservation Year 2009, the Zoological Society of London and the United Kingdom Trust for Nature Conservation had jointly organised the seminar to discuss efforts made to conserve the Rhino in Chitwan and Bardiya of Nepal. According to officials there has not been any poaching of rhinos since last eighteen months after special guards were recruited. The guards trained to recognise individual rhinos have been adhering to strict scientific monitoring of the rhinos since one and half year ago.

The British embassy in Nepal in a press release quoted Dr Richard Kock of Zoological Society of London as saying, "When we first arrived in Nepal, the barbed wire fence and machine gun mounts were still evident, but the losses of rhino were horrific.” Bardiya was initially sought as a safe haven for rhinos translocated from Chitwan National Park. However, heavy poaching had turned the park into a killing field rather. After the special patrolling arrangements through the trained guards, the parks have turned to be rhinos' safe haven again.

Nevertheless, invasive species, deforestation and encroachment by human settlements are still the threats for the rhinos.