The video of demonstrations and talks held during the four-day annual conference of Indian zoos in the provisional state capital Dehradun will be distributed to all the zoos in the nation from the next financial year. Further, as veterinary doctors are the ones who have direct contact with the animals in zoos, a national-level workshop will be held for zoo vets in the near future with the venue and date to be fixed soon.
On the concluding day of the conference of Indian zoos, the zoo directors from various Indian states were taken to the Dehradun zoo at Malsi where they saw a demonstration of micro-chip implantation on a vulture, a crocodile and a turtle housed in the zoo on Thursday.
Talking to The Pioneer, the Dehradun divisional forest officer Prasanna Kumar Patro said that earlier on Wednesday, the zoo directors visited the Chidiyapur rescue centre and shelter where they witnessed a leopard being tranquilised for implantation of a micro-chip and the implantation of micro chip on an elephant for identification and vital statistics. A sterilisation operation was also carried out on a macaque to demonstrate the method being adopted to mitigate human-simian conflict in the state. Following deliberations during the four-day conference, it was decided that protocol for tending to animals in zoos will be standardised and distributed to all zoos. “There are 166 zoos in India but of these the directors of 25 could attend the conference. To make the deliberations and conclusions arrived at during the conference known to all officials concerned, the video record of the conference will be distributed to the zoos across India from the next financial year. The focus of this conference was to sensitise zoo directors and it was decided that similar workshops will be held for sensitising the veterinarians and animal keepers of zoos,” said the DFO.