‘Hell zoo’ becomes sanctuary
WHERE ZOOKEEPERS ONCE SET A FIRE IN LIONS’ CAGE NOW A REHABILITATION CENTRE Famous for being the former home of shackled Asian elephant Kaavan.
Before it was forced to close over its “intolerable” treatment of animals, the Islamabad Zoo was home to neglected elephants and underfed lions, pacing back and forth behind the bars of their enclosures.
Now, four years later, it is a rehabilitation centre for Pakistani wildlife, providing a refuge for motherless leopard cubs, tigers seized from owners who kept them as status symbols, and bears forced to dance or fight for the amusement of crowds.
“The whole energy of the place has changed ever since the zoo was emptied... The care shows, look around,” Rina Saeed, the head of Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB), said.
The zoo found international notoriety in 2016, when singer Cher
launched a campaign to remove its shackled Asian elephant Kaavan, the last in the country and dubbed the world’s loneliest elephant.
But Kaavan’s treatment wasn’t an isolated incident. Two lions
died at the facility when zookeepers attempted to force them from their pen by setting fire to piles of hay. And, over the years, hundreds of animals listed on the zoo’s inventory simply vanished.
Pakistan’s climate change ministry said it was “seriously concerned” about the “intolerable and inhumane” treatment of animals at the zoo in 2020, the same year courts ordered it shut and
Kaavan was moved to Cambodia.
Within months of its closure, a small rescue centre began to take root at the facility, and now evidence of its past as a tourist attraction is fading. Silence hangs over the empty, overgrown parking lot and the shabby ticket stand sits idle next to a swing set.
“Now it is a proper rehabilitation centre with over 50 animals,” Saeed said, adding the team had rescued more than 380 animals.
Amir Khalil, a veterinarian who directs the global animal welfare organisation Four Paws, which oversaw Kaavan’s relocation, recently made an emotional return to the zoo, saying it “now holds hope”.
IWMB wants to establish a permanent sanctuary at the site, but the local authority that owns the land intends to reopen the facility as a public zoo.
“There is one [zoo] in almost every city worldwide,” said Irfan Khan Niazi of the environmental department of the Capital Development Authority, which oversees planning and development in Islamabad. “Just because rules were not followed once does not mean it would happen again.” –