Deer species are prolific breeders, which often prove to be a bit of a problem for zoos in the country where space is a luxury.
The zoo here reported a high number of deaths last year caused mainly by infighting, led to by overcrowded enclosures.
The new arrivals of swamp deer here only appears to pile on to a precarious situation.
But Zoo Department officials say that things are under control because of the sterilisation drives they have undertaken and other schemes on the anvil.
A project to transfer sambar deer to the wild is one of them. There are presently around 130 sambar deer in the zoo and to prevent them from mating, the male and female of the species have been segregated as a temporary measure.
But, if the Forest Department sanctions the proposal to release the deer to forested areas, the zoo says they have the equipment and trained personnel to facilitate the transfer.
This was carried out once before, around seven years ago, when sambar deer was released to a location near Ponmudi.
Such an alternative is said to reduce problems in areas where man-animal conflict is rife because natural prey is added on to the ecosystem. Moreover, it will support tiger conservation measures, a zoo official said. The sambar deer could also be released to the deer safari park at Neyyar, where there is only the spotted kind currently.
If the transfer does not get the Forest Department’s go-ahead, the zoo will do vasectomy on all males. A few months ago, they successfully carried out this procedure on 55 spotted deer males in the zoo with the support of the University of Calgary’s Veterinary Medicine Department.
More space will also be opened up in the zoo when the ageing elephant Maheshwari, dies.
While this is an unpleasant thought to the zoo staff, since she has been here since 1946, the practical aspect is hard to ignore. The Central Zoo Authority had mandated that all elephants in zoos must be transported to Forest Department facilities, but the zoo here won an exception because Maheshwari would not survive being transported out.
This area would then become a ‘Kaziranga Model’, where a single large open enclosure will accommodate rhinoceroses, and a few spotted and sambar deer.
