KARACHI: The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation has brought a pair of tigers from Lahore to the Safari Park through, what officials claimed, an ‘exchange deal’, without acquiring mandatory permission from the Sindh wildlife department, it emerged on Thursday.

The animals, according to sources, were a pair of golden tabby tigers (not a separate species but the ones with an extremely rare colour variation caused by a recessive gene that is currently found only in captive tigers). The big cats were brought from Lahore to Karachi by road and shifted to the Safari Park early in the morning, they said.

The administration did not allow media persons to either look at or take pictures of the animals. The media will see them on Friday, when their arrival would be formally announced by the Karachi commissioner, also acting as KMC administrator, Hashim Raza Zaidi.

According to sources, the big cats have been ‘exchanged’ with Safari’s surplus animals, including deer, camels and horses, with a Lahore-based party.

Hussain Bakhsh Bhagat, wildlife conservator in Sindh, said the KMC had not taken the mandatory approval from the department, which was a clear violation of the provincial wildlife laws.

“A letter would be sent to the KMC as inter-provincial movement of wild animals required permission from the department under the law.

“We could lodge an FIR against the Safari administration for not taking permission from the provincial wildlife authorities and confiscate the property that we could keep at a private farm duly registered with the department,” he said.

This was the second time, he said, in recent weeks that the KMC had violated wildlife laws.

“We are still waiting for a reply to the letter regarding the illegally imported pythons which the customs authorities had handed over to the former KMC administrator without taking the wildlife department on board. Both the customs and the KMC had violated wildlife laws and, subsequently, letters were sent to the departments asking them to explain their positions,” he said.

Referring to the letter’s content sent to the zoo, he said it showed the department’s concern over the matter and stated that the state-run facility was becoming a hub of illegally acquired animals.

The zoo, he said, had been asked to provide a list of animals and documents showing how they were acquired. “They have also been asked to show the zoo’s registration with the wildlife department,” he said.

On contact, Dr Kazim Hussain, senior veterinary surgeon and additional director of the Safari Park, refused to share details of the ‘animal exchange deal’ till tomorrow (Friday) when, he said, all the papers would be available to him and the animals would be opened for public exhibition by the KMC administrator.

“We have got the four-year-old tigers from a Lahore-based party in exchange for a number of surplus deer, horses and camels,” he said.

Answering a question as to why the offer for animal exchange was not publicised in the newspapers if the facility had animals in surplus, he said: “The procedure followed was transparent as the competent authority itself had approved the deal.”

Both the zoo and the Safari Park are run by the KMC, which, according to sources, has acquired a number of animals without taking mandatory permission from the federal and provincial wildlife authorities.

The number of animals kept without a mandatory import permit at the zoo is 39 — 31 pythons and four pairs of big cats.

Last year, a pair of chimps, a critically endangered species whose trade is internationally prohibited except in cases when the purpose is pure scientific research and education at a government-run facility, was acquired through a ‘donation’ by the Safari authorities.