Overcrowding turns zoos into wild ghettos

Roar of lions at Delhi zoo or shriek of crocodiles at Chennai park may excite visitors. But, for zoologists it shows a disturbing trend. Most animals are forced to live in ghetto-like conditions. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 4, 2013, 02:37:20 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Roar of lions at Delhi zoo or shriek of crocodiles at Chennai park may excite visitors. But, for zoologists it shows a disturbing trend. Most animals are forced to live in ghetto-like conditions.

The stinging observation has come from the national body mandated to provide better life to animals in zoos, the Central Zoo Authority. It has found that some of the popular zoos are over-crowded.

India has about 165 zoos and nature parks of which seven such as the National Zoological Park or the Delhi Zoo are considered big and another 16 as medium. Half of the major zoos in India have the problem of over-crowding.

The National Zoological Park or Delhi Zoo has 406 wild animals in excess to its carrying capacity. Sir Peter Scott Nature Park in Jamnagar, Gujarat, has 554 extra animals. Bannerghatta Biological Park new Bangalore has around 450. And, Crocodile Park in Chennai about 2,035 crocks more than needed.

Ravi Chellam, director (research & conservation), Madras Crocodile Bank Trust, said: "Many zoos lack a scientific collection plan, which specifies the species to exhibit and the desired population size. Zoos in general allow unplanned breeding, which results in overcrowding."

"One zoo had 16 tigers in a big cage and another 12 leopard…The zoo directors were emphatic in claiming that they have turned solitary animals into a social being," said an expert, who was not willing to be quoted.

An official at Central Zoo Authority, however, explained that most of the popular zoos are within city limits without much scope for expansion and not many new zoos have opened in the last decade to relocate surplus animals.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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