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Greater One-horned Rhinoceros, Wetlands, Bardiya National Park, Nepal, Asia

Nepal's population of one-horned rhinos has increased to its highest number in more than 20 years, partly owing to a pause in tourism due to the Covid-19 pandemic that allowed the animals' habitats to regenerate, conservationists said.

The population of rhinos across four national parks in Nepal increased to 752 in the latest count, up by more than 100 from 645 animals in 2015, according to Haribhadra Acharya, information officer at Nepal's Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC).

Since 2000, no previous survey of rhino populations by the Nepali government has found more than 650 of the animals.

Acharya said the tally was calculated by teams who divided the huge rhino habitat into squares and then counted the animals inside manually, sometimes riding domesticated elephants to cover the distances between areas.

It took about three weeks to count all the rhinos by a "direct sighting method," with Chitwan National Park proving the most difficult area due to its large population of the animals, Acharya said. According to the 2015 census of the rhinos, 90% of the animals lived in the park.

Acharya said the rise in population was the result of a number of changes, including investment in habitat management, controlling poaching and translocation of rhinos between habitats.

"Chitwan (National Park) is a major habitat for rhinos in Nepal but we have translocated them to (other parks) to make an alternate population and (as a result) the population has increased in those parks, and in Chitwan as well," Acharya said.