ANIMAL CRUELTY

The Lady Hydari Park here might be closed down following a complaint filed by People for Ethical Treatment to Animals (PETA) to the Central Zoo Authority (CZA) to shut down the zoo for poor facility available at the mini zoo.
The Zoo authorities here have been directed by the Apex Court to shift endangered species immediately to Assam after the complaint was filed by PETA and wildlife activists.
'' Some of the animals do not have mates…the zoo should be closed and the animals and birds should be relocated to enable them to live in a better condition. The zoo does not have a full time veterinarian and the inmates are kept more as captive animals,'' complained Anuradha Sawhney, chief functionary of PETA, India, in a letter to CZA.
PETA said, without a full-fledged veterinarian in the zoo there are no facility to take care of sick animal. '' The enclosures were not designed to meet the full biological requirements of the animals,'' Sawhney added.
Moreover, there are no screens provided between the adjacent enclosures to safeguard animals from being excited or stressed because of the visibility of animals in other enclosures, the PETA Chief said, adding there were no moats in any of the enclosures and the last construction was done way back in 1992.
The Central Zoo Authority had earlier, ''blacklisted'' the Lady Hydari Park, which houses leopard, slow loris, seraw, rhesus monkeys, hoolock gibbons, toddy cat, barking deer, sambar, hill mayna among other animals.
This was done after PETA submitted in 2006 a report to Central Zoo Authority on the pathetic conditions and violation of the Recognition of Zoo Rules by Meghalaya Forest and Environment Department.
The park, named after the wife of a British-era governor and which doubles as a mini zoo has been in the news for many years for all the wrong reasons. The government has purchased land in Ri-Bhoi district ( Umtrew) to open a state zoo, but work to open the zoo is yet to begin. (EOM)