Family planning at Dhaka zoo
Shahnaz Parveen
Faced with a booming population, Dhaka zoo authorities have separated male and female animals as a part of their plan to introduce family planning. Kazi Fazlul Haque, curator, Dhaka zoo, said that they are facing accommodation problems due to rapidly increasing population. "This is the reproductive season of lions and tigers. We are keeping fertile males and females in separate cages to control birth of new babies," he said. "We are facing severe accommodation problems as the current number of lion and tiger is already beyond our capacity," he added. Dhaka Zoo has a good reputation of breeding. Currently a tigress has given birth to three cubs. Haque said that the current number of lions in the zoo is 19 and tiger population is 15 whereas their display capacity is only four pairs. For accommodation problem, the authorities have kept six to eight lions in cages fit for only one pair. They also kept two pairs of lions in the quarantine centre of the zoo. "Other than problem with accommodations we have to spend extra money to feed these animals," Haque said. "For each lion and tiger 12kgs of meat is sanctioned. We feed them six days a week. For each additional tiger or lion we have to spend Tk. 1740. We are always in a budget constraints and this only adds to the problem", Haque said. "The additional number of animal is holding back our development programmes. We wanted to add new animals to make the zoo more attractive", he said. Haque mentioned that zoo would face the worst problem with hippopotamus if new babies were born. "Since hippopotamus needs ponds in their habitat it is going to be really hard if they reproduce. We don't have space for new ponds," he said. Currently the number of hippopotamus population is 9. The zoo authority had a severe accommodation problem in the deer cages but they found a way to solve the problem. The zoo has a scheme of selling deer. Price of each pair is Tk 30,000. Last year they had sold around 70 deer. A zoo official said that the introduction of expensive possession certificate and renewal fee by the Department of Forest is causing a decline in the deer sale recently. Possession certificate of one pair of deer is Tk 10,000 and renewal fee is Tk 5000. Current number of deer in the zoo is 196 while the capacity is only 50. Zoo is sending 5 pairs of deer to Kuwait as donation. Established in 1974 the zoo has about 189 species of animals in the facility, which attracts around 10, 000 visitors every day.
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