KARACHI, Oct 5: Three spotted deer — two females and a male — have died over the last three days at the Karachi Zoo. The zoo administration, however, has confirmed only two deaths and said that the blood samples of both animals have been sent to a private lab to determine the cause of death. The test reports are expected in 10 to 12 days.
According to zoo sources, three adult spotted deer, also known as chital, died suddenly over the past three days. A pair died on Tuesday followed by the death of a female the next day. In June this year, six fawns of fallow deer had also died, one after the other, within a week of their birth. Some of them, sources said, died of navel infection.
When the official in charge of the zoo, Mansoor Qazi, was approached on the issue, he maintained that only two spotted deer had died while denying the deaths of any fawns in recent months.
“One female spotted deer died on Wednesday while I am not sure about the sex of the other animal which expired earlier. No fawns have died over the summer. In fact, at the moment we have four to five young fallow deer,” he observed.
He also rejected the idea that tuberculosis or any other disease had spread among the zoo animals and stated that both the animals had been in good health and the cause of death would only be known once the blood test reports were made available.
About the black leopard’s and puma’s deaths earlier this year, he said that they had reached their age-limit in captivity and one of them died of pneumonia.
Having about 900 animals, the zoo has around 17 spotted deer and over 30 fallow deer. Though the number of fallow deer has increased from 28 to 35 over the years, the number of spotted deer has decreased from 26 to 17. A deer pair costs between Rs100,000 to Rs300,000. Besides other factors, including the lack of specialised care, improper feeding and the spread of epidemics, the zoo experts also relate high mortality to inbreeding.
At the moment the major obstacles directly affecting the well-being of animals include an acute shortage of trained staff, inadequate funds and long delays in their release. Though many zoo staffers have either retired or died during the past 10 years, there have been no new appointments since 1997 owing to the government ban on this process, while 65 posts are lying vacant.
The politicisation of affairs at the zoo has also added to the dearth of expertise at the institution, which can be gauged from the fact that there is only one veterinarian at the zoo.
The withdrawal of financial powers at the time of the local government system’s inception has also rendered the institution handicapped in the face of a plethora of problems. The government releases up to Rs700,000 under the head of medicinal expenditure every year, but the process is too slow and it takes months for the funds to finally reach the zoo, sources said.
KARACHI, Oct 5: Three spotted deer — two females and a male — have died over the last three days at the Karachi Zoo. The zoo administration, however, has confirmed only two deaths and said that the blood samples of both animals have been sent to a private lab to determine the cause of death. The test reports are expected in 10 to 12 days.
