After 10 years, Kufri zoo to get snow leopard
SHIMLA: Once again Himalayan Nature park in town’s surrounding Kufri will exhibit snow leopard soon. The state forest department is planning to get a male snow leopard from Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park in Darjeeling.
The zoo in Kufri will witness the snow leopard after a gap of ten years. It was in 2004, that under animal exchange programme the wildlife wing of the forest department had brought a pair of snow leopards from Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Park.
The feline pair were named Subash and Sapna. Being siblings, Subhash and Sapna were kept in isolation. As per Central Zoo Authority (CZA) guidelines, animals have to be kept in pairs as isolation causes emotional stress, leading to behavioural changes and other complications. As animals at both places are from the same genetic stock, mates have to be brought from abroad to prevent inbreeding.
However, after brief illness female leopard- Sapna died at the Zoo. Veterinary findings detected that the leopard died of severe feline infectious enteritis that affected her vital organs.
Left alone, a year later, Subash was sent back to Darjeeling for the conservation breeding of snow leopards.
“Matter has been taken up by the zoo authorities in Darjeeling they have agreed to send a leopard, but it would take another month or so,” principal chief conservator of forest and chief wild life warden RC Kang said . We have to see the transportation as it takes time and it needs to be safe too, Kang said.
It was in 2000, that the zoo got its first snow leopard. Rozy, an abandoned cub, was brought from Kibber in Spiti and reared at the Himalyan Nature park. Padmja Naidu Park and the Himalayan Nature Park are the only ones in the country to have snow leopards in captivity.
Two years later Rozy died, her death then sparked off a debate whether Kufri was climatically suitable for the high altitude animal found along the perennial snowline or not.
A team of experts probing Rozy’s death concluded that Kufri was more suitable than Darjeeling which is warmer and much more humid. But her postmortem had then raised serious questions about the growing pollution level in Kufri which attracts large number of tourists and is famous for its pony rides .
The postmortem report concluded that the carbon emissions from vehicles affected the cat . Further, the pollution from the dung of large number of horses in Kufri also led to the infections to her. Alarmed over her death, zoo authorities shifted the parking near
Rozy’s enclosure and restricted the movement of horses, near the zoo.