Mumbai Zoo to welcome giraffes, zebras and jaguars

These animals will be kept at the new 10-acres extension facility, adjacent to the existing zoo, and Request for Proposals for the project have been invited.

Mumbai: Five years after a colony of eight Humboldt penguins settled in the specially-created icy environs within the 160-year-old Veermata Jijabai Bhonsale Udyan & Zoo, the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) plans to introduce more exotic fauna from around the world.

The BMC hopes to gradually bring giraffes, zebras, white lions, jaguars and other wild species as part of the efforts to make the VJBUZ – set up in 1861 and one of the oldest in the country – into a world-class zoo.

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These animals will be kept at the new 10-acres extension facility, adjacent to the existing zoo, and Request for Proposals for the project have been invited.

The VJBUZ is located at Byculla in a 50-acres Grade 2(B) Heritage lush-green oasis in south Mumbai, barely five km from the BSE, which symbolises the city’s pre-eminent status as the country’s commercial capital.

Accorded the category of a ‘Medium Zoo’ till September 2022, by the Central Zoo Authority (CZA), BMC Municipal Commissioner I.S. Chahal announced a major phase-wise expansion plan of the VJBUZ to welcome the new exotic animals in the near future.

The BMC has already constructed 10 enclosures where animals like tigers, leopards, sloth bears, hyenas, jackals, sambar, spotted deer, swamp deer, and Madras Pond Turtle are on display.

Besides, an additional enclosure for Otters, the Indian wolf, barking deer, Nilgai, four-horned antelopes, and a project to augment the existing aviary shall be completed by next month.