Giraffes to dock at Port City in July, says forest minister

VISAKHAPATNAM: The long-awaited giraffes for the Indira Gandhi Zoological Park will finally sail into the Port City in the first week of July, said minister of environment and forests Satrucherla Vijayarama Raju.
Inaugurating the butterfly park at the Vizag Zoo here on Saturday, the minister said that the zoo authorities are in the process of finalising the shipping of the pair giraffes from Malaysia, which will be completed in a week’s time.Shipping the giraffes from Malaysia will take four days, following which they would be quarantined in Chennai for a period for three weeks before being brought to Vizag.
In addition, he pointed out, later this year, two cheetahs from Saudi Arabia, two chimpanzees from Israel, lemurs, fishing cats and pigmy hippos would also be added to the zoo in order to attract more visitors.
Addressing the media, he urged industries in the region to adopt animals at the zoo in order to improve facilities at the menagerie and also help in increasing the number of animals. Queried about the shortage of animal keepers in the zoo, he said that Vizag Zoo has to fill up vacancies of 11 animal keepers.
“An in-principle agreement has been given by the government to recruit 34 animal keepers, bearing in mind the retirement of several staff during the present year. The formal orders will be released in a week’s time,” he added.
He also pointed out that though animal keepers don’t have grade-wise promotions, they are given time-bound salary increments depending on the number of years they have served and the time slabs for promotions were 6, 12, 18 and 24 years.
IGZP curator G Ramalingam said that animal keepers have been provided an insurance cover of Rs 3 lakh and in case of casualty on the zoo premises they will get one-and-half times the cover. Every year, zoo keepers are provided Rs 30,000 by way of medical reimbursement, he added.
Meanwhile, the butterfly enclosure inaugurated at the zoo has 300 butterflies of 30 species, including Plain Tiger, Common Tiger, Blue Mormon and Skippers, to attract visitors. According to zoo authorities, most of these are seasonal and they would try to get more species when the weather is conducive.
Once the rainy season begins more than 100 species will be housed at the Butterfly Park, which is spread over an area of 700 square yards and surrounded by half-an acre of rose cultivation, said Ramalingam. The zoo will also encourage research in butterflies at the zoo. A separate rearing unit has been set up in order to undertake conservation of local species. If the number of butterflies increases over a period of time, then they would be released in the open, he added.