Lion enclosure project in Safari Park is in the doldrums

Karachi: The Community and Development Department(CDD) of the city government has kept lion enclosure project of Safari Park into cold storage for one year due to lack of interest and now the allocated funds will be lapsed on June 30.

Sources told Online that the former city government had allocated Rs10 million and awarded a tender to the contractor about a year ago to develop the project but due to lack of interest of the officials of community department and Works and Services Department(WSD), the project could not be started.

Sources said that the major reason of doldrums this project was inexperienced officials of the Safari Park who were not technically sound to start open-lion enclosure project under their supervision.

Without rational planning, the EDO CDD had bifurcated the Safari Park from the Karachi Zoological Garden about 10 months ago and appointed a separate district officer for Safari Park who had already charge of district officer land, sources said.

The open-lion enclosure was to be built on keeping the nature of lion. The certain size of fencing height, an artificial lake and other necessities were to be built for which existing staff were not capable as they had no experience about flora and funa, sources maintained. Before bifurcation, the Karachi Zoo officials had conducted a survey and selected a site for the construction of the project, however, construction work could not be started due to the cited bureaucratic tactics, sources said.

Sources the new administration of the Safari Park had changed the priorities and now the officials concerned had planned to construct the roads of the park and dropped the lion enclosure project.

It may be mentioned here that the Safari Park has an area of 400 acres where different species of animals and birds reside in open enclosures.

There are Neil Gai, red deer, white deer, gazelles, spotted deer, llamas and other grass-eating animals but there are no lion, cheetah or tiger etc in the Safari areas. Recently, a leopard has been gifted by NWFP to the Safari Park but this wild animal is residing in a small cage instead of an open enclosure.