MEDIA reports on Saturday said wild animals in the National Zoo located at Mirpur in the suburb of the city are not passing good life despite adequate government’s budgetary allocation and living arrangement. The death of chimpanzee few days back in the zoo makes the latest news while many blame utter negligence, greed and corruption of people working for the zoo are responsible for animal’s death in the sanctuary. The incidents are frequently taking place to be treated as a common phenomenon. In the last six months five more deaths including a majestic tigress, giraffe, lion, wildebeest and hippo took place but the zoo authorities kept them as top secret raising questions as to why they wanted to cover up those deaths. Reports said the zoo curator declined to concede the incident of deaths of other animals except the chimpanzee to propel doubt about the authority’s irregularity, neglect and lack of proper managerial capacity to run the zoo. While the world is becoming more aware about how to protect wild animals for their role in ecology and part of natural beauty, our negligence and such other corruptions are painful when we see animals are dying one after another. The chimpanzee that died recently was brought to veterinary hospital for treatment and was made anesthetic but she never regained the sense. In autopsy report, veterinary doctors found black spots at heart, lungs and kidneys of the chimpanzee to establish the fact that it was suffering for quite sometime and died of neglect. But the zoo curator would not admit the death of the animal. It seems that the medical treatment of the wild animals at the zoo is not standard and monitoring health of aged animals and those, which fall sick, is not regular either. Moreover it is no more a secret that the funds allocated to buy feed for animals, reptiles and birds is being routinely swindled by some people of the zoo authorities and attendants of cages for birds and animals. There is no transparency and accountability some previous reports blamed zoo people for removing meat and other food for tigers and lions; which left them partly hungry. They misuse money earmarked for buying food and medicine for other animals causing them to become weak and failing health. There are around five thousand animals in the National Zoo collected locally and from different countries. The zoo authorities buy animals worth Tk 5 to 6 crore in every four year from countries like Africa or Australia. They are working on a fresh move this time to buy new animals. But question arises whether the zoo authorities give proper attention and medical care that the animals need to survive in the environment that they need. We are really worried about the safety of the zoo animals as to whether they are getting proper nursing and food, the cases of death show that they are victims of neglect. Let there be strong vigilance against theft of animal food to stop corruption. Let humanity work when we are caring animals.
