The four rhinos, two males and two females, will be captured on Friday and shifted to Manas, where they will be released into the wild early Saturday morning, sources in the state forest department said. Manas, till the late 1980s, had over 100 rhinos, but the population had come down to zero during the subsequent years following rampant poaching after the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) militants ransacked the Park during the peak of Bodo militancy in the state.

The ambitious plan to shift rhinos to the 321-sq km Manas National Park, located about 150 km west of Guwahati close to the Bhutan border, which was earlier slated to start in February had hit a major roadblock as the drug required for tranquilizing the animals failed to arrive in Guwahati on time.

The translocation is part of the ambitious Indian Rhino Vision 2020 that seeks to attain a 3,000-strong rhino population distributed over seven national parks and wildlife sanctuaries across Assam. The authorities had last year shifted two elephant calves from Kaziranga National Park to Manas.

Pobitora on the other hand is a 38.8-sq km wildlife sanctuary 50 km east of Guwahati, which has one of the highest concentrations of one-horned rhinos in the world. While the last census carried out in August 2006 had recorded 81 rhinos in the sanctuary, the number is believed to have touched 90 this year. Two rhinos had also died in the sanctuary last year.

The other protected areas where translocation would take place in a phased manner are the Laokhowa-Burhachapori-Kochmora sanctuary, Dibru-Saikhowa National Park and Orang National Park. Among these, Orang already has a sizeable rhino population, whereas Laokhowa had witnessed a total annihilation of its 50-odd rhino population due to rampant poaching in the 1980s.

While Assam has over 2000 rhinos currently distributed in three areas — Kaziranga National Park, Orang National Park and Pobitora wildlife sanctuary — the state has lost as many as 67 rhinos to poachers between 2001 and 2007. This year too, the state has already lost five rhinos, most of them killed in and around Kaziranga.