Crying wolf on zoo securityIJ
The death of the 20-year-old youth by a seven-year old white tiger at the Delhi Zoo on Tuesday has raised serious questions about safety arrangements at the zoological park. Even tough zoo officials claimed its enclosures to be safe, the absence of adequate guards and laxity on the part of officials in penalising violators are urgent concerns that the authority ought to address, opine wildlife experts. Besides, the zoo authority’s long-term plan of putting the park under full CCTV coverage has also been hanging in limbo due to a pending court case.
The Capital’s National Zoological Park, one of the oldest in the country, is home to about 1,556 different birds and animals. It witnesses an average footfall of around 6,000 on weekdays and nearly 13,000 on weekends. Yet, the entire 176 acres of the park has only 42 guards deployed on weekdays and 52 on weekends. The zoo authority believes the number is almost sufficient to manage security arrangements, but experts are not satisfied. “There are constraints in a zoo in terms of physical safeguards like grilles and barricades. Animals in a zoo have to be kept in a natural environment to the greatest extent possible as you cannot cage them all the time. So, in such a case the best you can do is to deploy extra manpower to keep strict vigil,” said Rahul Mishra, wildlife expert and member of People for Animals (PFA) an NGO.
Besides, eyewitnesses of Tuesday’s incident reported that an action from the guards came pretty late and that the situation could be handled in a much better way. “The wireless SOS message was sent late and the guards were shooing away the white tiger by beating sticks on the railings. They could have used firecrackers or administered a tranquilizer on the tiger. The overall response was late and unskilled,” said Captain Shraddha, a visitor who witnessed the horrific incident.
“The man himself jumped into the enclosure and our guards raised an alarm immediately. By the time we could bring the tranquilisers from our hospital it was too late,” said RA Khan, curator (Education), Delhi Zoo. Amitabh Agnihotri, the zoo director said, “All the enclosures of the National Zoological Park are absolutely safe as they have been designed as per the standards laid down by the Central Zoo Authority. No visitor can reach the moat wall of the enclosure without the stand-off barrier.”
The people are also equally to be blamed here, they opine. Suparna Ganguly, founder trustee of Bangalore-based Compassion Unlimited Plus Action, an NGO for animal rehabilitation, said the tiger was not at fault. “We get to see a lot of hooliganism among zoo visitors. People misbehave, disturb and harass the animals who have already been deprived of their natural habitat.” However, the incident suggested that since there was a considerable gap between the man falling into the tiger enclosure and the animal attacking him, zoo authorities could have reacted with greater alacrity and could have been better equipped to handle this emergency.
A stricter vigil and penalising violators could also be a sound safety strategy. At present, the Delhi Zoo in accordance to the Wildlife Protection Act has notices in all its enclosures that disturbing the animals or crossing over the railings would have a penalty of up to Rs 2,000. But security officials seemed to be quite lax in penalizing such violators. “It is difficult for us to give the total number of persons we have fined. But on weekends, we penalize around two or three persons,” said the security in-charge of Delhi zoo who didn’t wish to be named.
“Prosecution should be made compulsory and it should be implemented by force. It is only when people would shell out heavy amount of money from their pockets,” added Mishra.