The mauled remains of a hog deer lie on National Highway 37 that forms the southern boundary of Kaziranga National Park. Animals fleeing the rising waters of the Brahmaputra during monsoon floods face the daunting task of crossing the busy Highway in order to reach the Karbi Anglong hills.
The Highway is one of the serious threats to conservation in the Kaziranga landscape. The least that can be done immediately is to implement a ban on night-traffic, something that has been done in other protected areas in India, and put up barricades to slow down traffic at identified wildlife crossing points. In the longer term, the pending project to create a 50 km detour by realigning the Highway along the north bank of the Brahmaputra should be cleared, and the work expedited. The alternative to this detour is an extra-long flyover. So far, however, there has been no move to implement these measures. In the meanwhile, the pressure from some sections of society to four-lane the highway are growing.
An even more worrying problem is that even after animals have successfully crossed the road during floods, they increasingly have nowhere left to go, as all the corridors around Kaziranga are getting choked by development.
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