Whereas wild-lifers and school children reiterated their commitment to preservation and conservation of flora and fauna and talked big to create awareness about the same during the Wildlife Safety Week, taxidermies of a snow leopard and a Siberian tiger that were also prepared after the deaths of the said big cats at the GB Pant high altitude zoo in Nainital to create awareness by way of putting them on display in zoo museum are still gathering dust in the aforesaid zoo premises for long.
The taxidermy of the snow leopard has been gathering dust in the Nainital zoo premises since 2011 while the Siberain tiger's taxidermy is meeting similar fate for nearly two years. Since the snow leopard and the Siberian tiger belong to rare variety of wildlife species the zoo officials, therefore, decided to ensure presence of the aforesaid snow leopard and Siberian tiger even in the form of their taxidermies so as to enable the animal lovers to have a glimpse of these species even after their death.
However, when quizzed about the present state of the taxidermies, the officials concerned of the GB Pant high altitude zoo Nainital said that these taxidermies had to be kept in the zoo interpretation centre. Since the same interpretation centre is not yet ready the taxidermies have not yet been installed for public view.
More so, there is also need for some technical persons who could properly explain about a variety of wildlife species and related things. So efforts are on to meet these requirements and to put things like taxidermies in the proper order, they added. It may be recalled that the snow leopard Rani died in 2010 and its taxidermy was prepared in 2011. The said snow leopard was brought from Darjeeling in 2004.
The said Siberian tiger was popularly known here at the Nainital zoo as Kunal. Two Siberian tigers -- Kunal and Mahesh -- were brought to the aforesaid zoo in Nainital from Darjeeling in 1997. Kunal was then about two and half year old while its fellow Mahesh was about six months older than Kunal, as informed the officials concerned. Owing to some health disorder, Mahesh died in 2001 while Kunal died when he was about 17 in 2011. His taxidermy was prepared in early 2013.