Manas: A Forest That Fell, Fought, and Found Its Way Back

In the late 1980s, when armed conflict swept through Bodoland, Manas National Park — once Assam’s pride and a glowing UNESCO World Heritage Site — began to empty out like a forest holding its breath. Guard camps were abandoned overnight. Poachers armed with automatic rifles walked in as if claiming a prize no one was left to defend. Watchtowers rusted into the soil; camps were torched; and more than 40 per cent of the park’s dense cover vanished under encroachment, illegal farming, and timber mafias. The rhinos disappeared. The swamp deer vanished so completely that even the forest seemed to forget them.

For more than a decade, gunfire replaced birdsong in Manas — a wilderness trapped between insurgency and abandonment. Between the late ’80s and early 2000s, the conflict between Bodo groups and the state turned the forest into a war zone. Political scientist Sanjib Baruah once described such places as “stateless spaces” — landscapes where law, governance, and certainty dissolve. Manas was exactly that: a forest where survival depended on negotiations made in shadows.

Today, two decades after the Bodo Accord, Manas tells a startlingly different story. A new Wildlife Institute of India (WII) study has recorded a rare phenomenon in global conservation — a conflict-ravaged landscape inching, unevenly but unmistakably, back to life.

The Long Fall

The scale of the collapse was unprecedented. Poaching in Manas turned ruthless and organised. Between 1987 and 2005, the rhino population dropped from nearly 100 to zero. Elephant tuskers were butchered for ivory; tigers shot for skins and bones. Bushmeat hunting stripped the grasslands bare — hog deer, spotted deer, wild pigs, even hares vanished. Without prey, the forest fell into an unnatural silence.

By 1992, UNESCO placed Manas on its “World Heritage Site in Danger” list. The findings were grim: abandoned camps, a collapsed protection system, illegal cultivation pushing deep into the core, and flagship species wiped out. Communities, trapped between militants and security forces, had little choice — the forest became a place to extract from rather than protect.

"Manas wasn't dying from the outside," said a ranger who had since retired. "It was dying from the inside."

A Slow Turning of the Tide

A shift began only after 2003, with the creation of the Bodoland Territorial Council. For the first time in years, hope returned. The new administration put Manas at the centre of its political and cultural rebuilding. “Without restoring Manas, we cannot imagine building a prosperous Bodoland,” then BTC Deputy Chief Kampa Borgoyari declared.

Forest camps were reopened, encroachments were pushed back, anti-poaching units were revived and, in one of the boldest decisions in its conservation history, the department hired reformed poachers as forest guards.

"They already knew the forest better than anyone," said a former DFO. "This time they used that knowledge to protect."

Tourism returned slowly. NGOs like Aaranyak, WTI and WWF rebuilt ground networks. And in 2008, Indian Rhino Vision 2020 brought rhinos back to Manas after nearly two decades of absence. In 2011, UNESCO removed the “in-danger” tag — a symbolic but powerful recognition of a forest reclaiming its dignity.

Science of a Recovery

Between 2022 and 2023, a WII team undertook one of the most exhaustive wildlife assessments in decades — elephantback surveys, distance sampling, and a dense camera-trap grid covering the India-Bhutan landscape. The results carried an unusual optimism.

Elephants, tigers, and wild buffalo are thriving.

Gaur, sambar, and barking deer populations remain stable.

Both rhinos and swamp deer have shown encouraging growth since their respective reintroductions.

A total of 57 adult tigers were photo-captured-a high number that confirms Manas as a source population for the transboundary landscape.

"The recovery of key species is inextricably linked with improved law and order," the lead researcher, Vaibhav Chandra Mathur, said. "This was possible because of better protection, restoration of grasslands, and involvement of the community.

Yet, the recovery carries its own warning signs. Hog deer numbers have dropped by 82% and wild pigs by 67% between 2015 and 2023. Mathur calls it a “predator-pit situation” — tigers increasing faster than prey can recover. WTI’s Samir Sinha links it to habitat loss: “Tall, wet grasslands are shrinking. Without them, hog deer don’t stand a chance.”

If prey densities continue to decline, then tiger–human conflict may increase.

A Community Revolution

Perhaps the most remarkable transformation in Manas is social, not ecological. After 2003, the communities that once lived in fear became custodians of the forest. Former poachers surrendered weapons. Youth groups joined patrols. Women revived wetlands and pushed back invasive weeds like mikania.

"For us, restoring Manas meant restoring our own lives," said C. Ramesh, Field Director of Manas Tiger Reserve.

Indeed, the Manas Maozigendri Ecotourism Society became a national model — its youth patrol teams filling in protection gaps during the forest's fragile recovery years. Stories of unlikely heroes emerged: like birder Rustom Basumatary, once a village boy, now one of India's most respected bird guides, credited with rediscovering the endangered white-bellied heron in Manas.

"The forest came back because the people changed," Sinha said. "They became guardians."

Change and Memory

In May 2008, when Manas was still raw from conflict, field teams trudged through slush and early floods, checking camera traps from Panbari to the Bhutan border, walking through a forest that felt unsure of itself — recovering in patches, wounded in others. Returning today feels surreal: bridges now stand where makeshift boats once ferried people, eco-camps operate where villages once echoed with gunfire, children cycle to school on roads once patrolled by militants, and long-abandoned tea estates are slowly coming back to life. Yet alongside this renewal rise new anxieties — shrinking grasslands, wetlands choked by mikania, expanding infrastructure squeezing the buffer, and the looming threat of upstream dams in Bhutan. Manas has come a long way, but it stands on a delicate, uneasy balance.

Wisdom of the Witness

It was on a misty morning that an elderly man, Chanrakanta, once an ABSU activist and now a conservation leader in Bhuyanpara over steaming tea, remembered the darkest decade.

“Between 1993 and 2003, Manas was finished,” he said. “No trees. No animals. No trust” he said. “In 2005, 120 poachers came with 27 guns and surrendered. Those same men became forest guards. That’s when Manas began to heal.”

It wasn't a line; it was a truth shaped by fire and forgiveness.

"If we kill the forest, we kill our roots," he said as the sun lifted the morning haze.

A Fragile, Living Experiment

Manas is not a finished triumph but a fragile, ongoing negotiation — between politics and ecology, between memory and recovery, between people and the forest itself. Its story carries lessons that reach far beyond Assam: whenever justice collapses, conservation collapses with it; a forest can only truly flourish when the society around it is stable; and no ecological revival is possible without political peace. Manas fell apart when conflict tore through its governance, but it began to rise again when cooperation, dignity, and shared power returned to the landscape. How firmly these foundations hold will ultimately decide the forest’s future.

Where Forest and Future Meet

As dusk fell over Bhuyanpara, women roll up their taat-shaals, smoke curls from chimneys, children’s laughter drifts across elephant grass turning gold in the fading light. A hornbill calls from the canopy — a sound once lost, now returning.

Manas still bears its scars, but it also gathers its strength. Memory is the forest here. It is livelihood. It is identity. It is home. And above all, it stands as living proof that even a forest broken by conflict can find its way back — when people choose to heal alongside it.

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