Tirupati's SV Zoo Park offers exchange of animals

Nellore: A female giraffe and a female jaguar will be added soon to give company to their male counterparts in Sri Venkateswara Zoo at Tirupati.

Officials of the S.V. Zoo in Tirupati are on the lookout for the female species in a bid to ensure reproduction and sex ratio in the zoo.

The zoo authorities are in touch with directors of other Zoos and ready to offer lions or white tigers, in view of their sizeable numbers in the zoo, as exchange for the female giraffe and the jaguar.

Thanks to 1200 hectares of reserve forest area, with flora and fauna necessary for wild animals, allotted to the zoo, it is one among very few zoos having an in built Lion Safari and plans are afoot to establish an exclusive herbivore safari too since only 300 hectare only used so far and the balance of 900 hectares is available for development.

Top priority is being given for animal protection especially during summer and several measures have been taken towards this end.

For the first time as many as 800 sprinklers have been installed all around the zoo before the onset of summer and the facility has been helping to maintain the temperature in the zoo at 30 degrees even in the afternoons thus protecting the 1,200 odd species housed in the zoo from harsh summer heat.

They include jaguars, Asiatic lions, leopards, Royal Bengal tigers, white tigers, wild dogs, Indian wolves, jackals, hyena, barking deer, Nilgai or Blue Bull, spotted deer, giraffe, Sambar, Black Buck, Swamp Deer, Hog Deer, elephants, Indian Gaur, Chowsingha and Mouse Deer besides birds.

A B.Tech student in National Defence Academy at Pune and an employee of Navy, Tarun Sathya, donated funds for the sprinklers and zoo curator Y. Srinivasulu Reddy claims that animals as well as visitors are very happy with the system while referring to spurt in number of visitors.

A native of Tirupati, Tarun, who is currently doing a project on developing zoo monitoring system, had all the praise for one Y. Suresh of Tirupati for executing the drip system in the zoo in a record time.

According to the curator, they have added 22 coolers to existing 20 in the night houses of Carnivores after taking each animal as unit.

In addition to this, a defunct swimming pool has been renovated with arrangements to change water on daily basis much to the delight of the elephants in the zoo.

The zoo also launched a campaign to promote animal adoption progra-mme in a big way. "Vis-itors to the zoo are being enlightened on the adoption scheme and they are showing lot of interest. Some of them came forward to offer monetary support for facilities in the zoo," Mr Srinivasulu Reddy said.