Hyderabad to soon get another zoo, to house exotic animals from Africa, Europe, Australia

The upcoming facility, which will be in addition to the Nehru Zoological Park, will be developed in 200 acres at Mucherla

Hyderabad: Hyderabad will soon be home to another zoo, focusing mainly on exotic animals.

To be developed in 200 acres near the proposed Future City and with focus on species that are exotic in nature, the new zoological park will be in addition to the present Nehru Zoological Park at Bahadurpura.

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The State government has allocated 200 acres of land at Mucherla and development will be taken up by the Telangana Forest Development Corporation. The project will come up under a public-private-partnership model with private entities expected to play a role in various areas, including design and management.

Unlike the present collection at the Nehru Zoological Park, the new zoo will focus entirely on exotic animals and collection is expected to include species from Africa, South America, Europe and Australia.

“There is a plan to set up another zoo and the State government has allocated 200 acres in Mucherla. The new development will be on the lines of the Singapore Zoo,” Dr Sunil S Hiremath, Director of Zoo Parks Telangana, told ‘Telangana Today’.

Initially, there were speculations about relocating the Nehru Zoological Park to Shadnagar to make way for construction of the new building for the High Court.

However, the plan was said to have been shelved given stringent regulations, approvals from the Central Zoo Authority and union Ministry of Environment and Forest besides cumbersome processes involved in shifting the zoo. Later, the State government allocated 100 acres in Premavathipet and Budwel villages of Rajendranagar mandal in Rangareddy district for new High Court buildings construction.

“Just for an animal exchange programme between zoos, the permission from the Central Zoo Authority is mandatory. Imagine the kind of permissions required to shift an entire zoo. The present zoo will stay in the same location,” sources said.

After relocating the erstwhile zoo enclosures from Public Gardens, the Nehru Zoological Park was launched in 1963. Spread across 380 acres abutting the Mir Alam tank, the zoo is home to 194 animal species with 49 mammals, 106 birds, 37 reptiles and two amphibians. Presently, it has over 2,200 animal collections.