KARACHI: City’s two major facilities for captive animals — Karachi Zoological Gardens and Safari Park — have recently seen major additions that were made officially possible without spending a single penny, it emerged on Wednesday.

Sources said four big cats — a pair of lions and another of pumas — were brought to the zoo in a truck late afternoon a few days back. One of the pumas, however, was found dead on arrival in its cage.

The sources said the animals were later released in their separate zoo cages and the zoo staff preserved the puma’s body without carrying out a post-mortem examination.

At Safari Park, the sources said, a pair of lions was recently shifted to the facility in a similar manner. All the animals, they said, were between the age of eight and 10 years.

Speaking to Dawn, a senior zoo official said that the animals were ‘gifted’ to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) facilities by a private zoo being run at a housing scheme.

“Apparently, the private zoo was finding it difficult to feed and manage growing numbers of its big cats. Hence, it gifted some of its old animals to us,” the official said on the condition of anonymity.

He added that the animals were healthy.

About the puma’s death, he said it’s difficult to say anything about the exact cause since the zoo didn’t carry out an autopsy. “It seems that proper safety measures were not in place during transportation that resulted in its death,” he said.

The sources expressed surprise over KMC’s move to accept the ‘gifts’ given its long-standing financial liabilities. The continued failure to pay off its feed contractors over the years had resulted in accumulation of liabilities of Rs100 million, they said.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2024