Which animal is the attraction in Kaziranga National Park, Assam?

Kaziranga National Park's identity, like several of India's protected wildlife areas, rests on a single "flagship species" — the one animal for which the reserve is primarily established and internationally recognised, which anchors both its conservation mandate and its tourism identity, even when other notable species also share the same habitat.

Kaziranga National Park lies in the Golaghat and Nagaon districts of Assam along the Brahmaputra river. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed principally for its population of the Indian one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis). Kaziranga holds the world's largest single population of this species — more than two-thirds of the global count — which makes the rhinoceros the park's defining attraction.

Comparing the near-miss options by their own record:

• Lion (Panthera leo persica): India's only surviving wild lion population lives at Gir National Park in Gujarat, not in Assam's floodplain reserves.

• Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris): Kaziranga is also an officially designated Tiger Reserve with a high tiger density, but parks such as Corbett (Uttarakhand), Ranthambore (Rajasthan), and the Sundarbans (West Bengal) are more commonly cited for the tiger as their flagship draw; UNESCO and the state tourism authority identify the rhinoceros, not the tiger, as Kaziranga's signature attraction.

• Bear (sloth bear / Himalayan black bear): Bears occur in scattered forest habitats elsewhere in India (for example, the Satpura range in Madhya Pradesh) but are not the animal for which Kaziranga is internationally known.

Therefore, the animal that is Kaziranga National Park's defining attraction is the Rhinoceros.