It was a special moment on Monday for the people of the northeast, when a pair of zebras, was released at the Assam State Zoo and Botanical Garden, popularly known as the Guwahati zoo. The Guwahati Zoo is hosting zebras after almost 30 years, along with a giraffe, in the presence of Assam environment and forest minister Chandra Mohan Patowary.
The pair of zebras, a male and a female, was brought from the Sri Chamarajendra Zoological Garden, popularly known as the Mysore Zoo, in Karnataka. They are one and three years old, respectively. The pair of zebras have been named as Joy and Joya.
The female giraffe, which was brought from the Sanjay Gandhi Biological Park in Bihar’s Patna, is five-years-old. The female giraffe, Bijoya, has been added to the enclosure housing, Bijoy, the lone male giraffe in the Guwahati zoo. The forest minister has asked the Guwahati zoo authorities to take good care of the animals and create optimal conditions for captive breeding, so that their population increases.
Meanwhile, the Guwahati zoo has taken several steps to develop its infrastructure, and project reports are being prepared for reconstruction of the facilities. In January this year, the Guwahati zoo celebrated the birth of a black panther cub to parents Meena and Mohan.
Mohan, the male black panther, was raised at the Guwahati zoo after being rescued from Doomdooma in Upper Assam’s Tinsukia district some nine years ago. He was about one and a half months old then and was hand-raised by the zoo staff.
Meena was rescued by the state forest department in Khowang Range of Dibrugarh district in May 2017 and brought to the Guwahati zoo. The big cat had strayed into a village and was severely injured when people cornered and attacked her.
The Guwahati zoo is now the only zoo in the country to have a family of five black panthers, and a total of six black panthers in captivity, including the cub. A black panther is the melanistic colour variant of any big cat species. In Asia and Africa, melanism occurs among five subspecies of leopards.
In Assam, though, the leopard remains a poorly attended-to species. The Guwahati zoo, spread across 432 acres, had another reason to rejoice, when lioness Rani, gave birth to two cubs, on January 17 this year. Rani is seven years old and the father of the cubs’ is Leo. Both Rani and Leo were brought to Guwahati zoo from the Gujarat zoo.
The Guwahati zoo is home to over 1,280 animals. Thousands of visitors, both domestic and foreigner, come to the zoo to have a glimpse of some of the endangered and exotic animals, who are housed at the biggest zoo of the northeastern region. With the addition of the new members, the authorities are hopeful that the zoo will see an increase in the footfall of tourists in the days to come.