Concern expressed at poor animal care in Peshawar Zoo

PESHAWAR: The wildlife activists have expressed concern over the deteriorating animal care at the Peshawar Zoo and called for improvement.

Masooma Shah, who operates a social media group associated with the social causes in Peshawar, voiced concerns of the animal lovers in a press release issued here on Wednesday.

The communication said the civil society members recently received the sad news of yet another animal death at Peshawar Zoo, a Bengali tigress. It said the increasingly deteriorating conditions of animal welfare at Peshawar Zoo were quite alarming. Masooma Shah said the Peshawar Zoo has been constantly in the news since its opening in 2018 for the high number of animal deaths, unsuitable enclosures and lack of veterinary services for its animals. She said it was hoped that, after all the previous complaints, criticism and news reports, the zoo administration would take these deaths seriously and properly manage the facility but unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case as reports of animal deaths emerge periodically.

Masooma Shah said a newspaper report on the death of the Bengali tiger, quoted the zoo administration as saying it was difficult to keep them separately for lack of resources.

The wildlife activist asked: “Why did the situation have to come to this? Why were too many tigers brought into the zoo to share the same enclosure in the first place?” She asked if the Zoo administration knew of the danger the tigers posed to each other, why the situation was not remedied.

“Is there any authority to check if the zoo administration is following international guidelines in terms of the maximum number of animals allowed per enclosure?” she asked. Masooma Shah said despite having raised our concerns a number of times in the past and investigations by the authorities, nothing seems to have changed. “We are greatly concerned at the physical and mental wellbeing of the animals at Peshawar Zoo,” she said. The wildlife activists requested the authorities and the Peshawar High Court to take immediate action against those whose negligence and incompetence resulted in animal deaths.