GAUHATI, India – More than 100 animals, including 10 one-horned rhinos, have died in massive flooding at the famous Kaziranga game reserve in northeast India, authorities said.
The flood prompted Prince William and his wife, former Kate Middleton, to express concern in a letter to park authorities, officials said Saturday.
“Since the first week of June, we have no respite with wave after wave of flooding that has wreaked havoc within Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve,” said Kaziranga Park Director P. Sivakumar. He said an animal that had drowned in a swollen river near the park on Saturday raised the death toll from endangered rhinos to 10.
The British royal couple, formally known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, wrote to Mr. Sivakumar expressing their anguish over the devastation of the park and its precious wildlife. The couple had visited the park in 2016 to learn about conservation and anti-poaching efforts.
“The death of so many animals, including the single-horned rhino, is deeply disturbing,” they wrote.
The flood is the result of a monsoon that threw rain in parts of India, Bangladesh and Nepal, displacing 9.6 million people, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. More than 550 people have died in the floods, the group said.
The organization warned of a humanitarian crisis and said that about a third of Bangladesh has already been flooded, and more floods are expected in the coming weeks. He said that 2.8 million people have been affected and that more than 1 million were isolated.
In India, more than 6.8 million people have been affected by the floods, mainly in the northern states of Assam, West Bengal, Bihar and Meghalaya, on the border with Bangladesh, the group said, citing official figures. In Bihar, at least 10 people have died, the state disaster management authority said on Saturday.
In Assam, the home of Kaziranga, 96 people have died in floods and another 26 have died in landslides. Some 50,000 people have sought refuge in government-run aid camps.
