A little news from the zoo, thought i would post it, as we don't hear much from Nepal eKantipur.com - Nepal's No.1 News Portal
Review... I said I was going to get around to writing about my visit to Patan Central Zoo a long time ago but kept getting distracted by work, university, and life in general. To begin with, here is a photo of the map that I took on the day. There’s a short review in the comments. http://www.zoochat.com/655/central-zoo-kathmandu-zoo-map-393702/ My zoo visiting experience was quite limited up to this point. Restricted to the largest Australian collections, the Singapore parks, and a few of the more well known European zoos. Patan Zoo was the first zoo in a developing country that I’ve visited and I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t a bad as I was expecting. Saying that, I was expecting the worst. We’ve all seen photos of zoos across Asia where large carnivores are kept in tiny barred dens, elephants are chained, and ungulates are kept on cement. Judging from some of the exhibits that are still standing around the zoo, this one would have been the same if I’d visited 10 years ago but I’m happy to say that the majority of the zoo exhibits are adequate, not great but not bad. However, there are a couple of really nice exhibits. According to Wikipedia ( [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Zoo]Central Zoo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] ), Patan Central Zoo opened in 1932 as a private collection. In 1956 it opened to the public and was handed over to the National Trust for Nature Conservation in 1995. Since this time, the National Trust for Nature Conservation has been trying to upgrade what they can as funds become available. The species list on Wikipedia also looks pretty accurate. The impression I got from talking to a few locals was that this is one of the most popular attractions for the growing middle class. It’s sort of seen as a big day out. That’s why I was surprised when the taxi driver that picked me up had never heard of it. One of his colleagues gave him rough directions and we spent quite a while driving around in circles before he finally spotted it across a soccer field. Thankfully I’d arranged a price before I got in (probably still quite a bit more than a local resident would have paid anyway). Perhaps visiting on a Saturday was the wrong thing to do because there was quite a queue at the ticket windows and it was a shambles. People were pushing in all over the place (British visitors would have had a heart attack) and it became clear that this is definitely one of the city’s favourite places. Eventually I just jumped in and grabbed my ticket, otherwise I would have been there for hours. Tourists have to pay more but it obviously wasn’t much because I can’t seem to remember what I paid for the life of me. Upon entering, you’re greeted by what may have been a formal garden in the past and a view out over the main lake. If you look at the map you can see that this takes up a large part of the zoos total space and it is quite stagnant. The layout is sort of like a formal garden and might have been quite grand in its heyday. From the entrance plaza I walked over to the most immediate exhibit; a sunken exhibit for gharial with a pond in the centre. Nothing special but I was surprised that they could be kept outside year round. My visit was at the start of winter and the Kathmandu Valley was already getting quite cold over night. Situated next to this is a small area with some mechanical fairground rides. I didn’t have a go but they seemed very popular with the locals. From here I just followed the route around the zoo in a clockwise direction. The south side of the is a single row of concrete walled exhibits for an impressive variety of Asian ungulates. The dividing wall of the first two exhibits had been removed to give blackbuck and chital a larger shared home, followed by a single swamp deer stag, muntjac, goral, chousingha, blue sheep, and finally striped hyena in possibly the least secure exhibit that I’ve ever seen. On the opposite side of the path are view of the lake and the first part of the hippo exhibit. This part was empty on my visit and I only saw one hippo in the second part. The south west corner of the zoo is home to the zoos Indian rhinos, rhesus macaques, common langurs, and Bengal tigers. The rhinos are kept in a pair of sand yards; they were unattractive but certainly no worse than some of the rhino exhibits in Europe or Australia (possibly the US too). The side-by-side primate exhibits were also not bad. They were tall, well furnished, and the primates were allowed to access their night quarters (so I only saw one langur and two macaques). The last exhibit in this section was one of the nicest surprises. A very attractive exhibit for bengal tigers and a similar enclosure under construction next door. Both were large, walled grottoes that are viewed through mesh from the front side. The one tiger that I caught a glimpse of through the dense vegetation was sitting towards the back of the right hand exhibit. Does anyone know if these are pure bengal tigers? Heading along the path between the rhinos and hippo is quite difficult because these are easily two of the most popular zoo residents. Here you see some of the most disappointing exhibits at the zoo. The Assamese macaques are kept in a low (but not tiny) cage, Asian buffalo (again, are these pure wild buffalos?) live in a concrete walled pit viewed from a terrace, and a pair of siamangs live in small but tall cage. On the map there is an exhibit that’s marked for leopards but I’m glad to say it was empty and unsigned on my visit because it was a small, barred, brick building that I would liken to a prison cell. Jackals were kept in a cage at the end of this. It was too small and turned out to not be the only jackal exhibit. The elephant exhibit that’s marked on the map is more of a stable area for the elephant that’s used in the rides that are offered by the zoo. This practice doesn’t have a place in modern zoos in the western world but in Nepal elephant riding is very normal. The bear exhibit in this part of the zoo is a round cage that’s split into two semi-circular cages for Asian black bear and a group of sloth bear. Even if they were combined into one exhibit it would still be too small for the bears and a couple of the sloth bears were showing stereotypical behaviour. To finish this section was the leopard exhibit (which was labelled for langurs on the map and provided a much nicest space than the exhibit they must have formally been kept in), a small mammal house with small outdoor exhibits for Himalayan Palm civet, leopard cat, large Indian civet, Common palm civet, Indian crested porcupine, and jungle cat, and a low dark house for the rest of the zoos jackals. This was even smaller than the other exhibit and made me think that it was used as overflow for a growing number of jackals. Does anyone know how many jackals the zoo has? The next section seems more recent than the rest of the zoo and contains most of the bird collection. In one corner are a few low aviaries for pheasants and Eurasian eagle owl and then spread around the garden are three hexagonal (maybe octagonal? something -agonal at the very least) aviaries that are split into wedges for quite a few pheasants (and oriental pied hornbills in one of them). In the centre of this section is another of the zoos surprising exhibits. The red panda had a whole tree surrounded by a low fence and a small glass fronted house at the rear. Around the outside were the larger birds; -two fenced yards contained a couple of ostriches and a large group of emus (what looked like a few adults and a lot of sub-adults), -three large aviaries for a pair of lesser adjutant storks, a sarus crane, and a white stork, -a large cage for parrots (I’ve forgotten sorry), -an aviary for black-necked stork, black-headed ibis, and Lady Amherst pheasant, and -an aviary for black kite, Himalayan griffon vulture, and white -rumped vulture that could have been bigger. The last few exhibits in the north-east corner of the zoo were pretty odd. The guinea pigs and reptiles were very popular and kept in glass fronted exhibits viewed from the outside of the building. I couldn’t get close enough to see what reptile species were kept because of the large crowds. The aquarium was less busy and was essentially seven or so large fish tanks under a tin roof. The species were labelled but I don’t remember them containing anything exceptional. Goldfish lived in one of the tanks. Aldabra tortoises have a small sandy yard next to the aquarium and the final exhibit was a small concrete yard for a pair of nilgai. Overall, it’s clear that the management of the park have the right intentions. The exhibits are generally not bad and the newer developments are actually pretty good. Signage throughout the park is in Nepali and English and informative enough (some of the distribution maps were definitely not accurate (I’ll post photos to show what I mean)). I think it’s a zoo with a future. Check it out if you ever find yourself in Kathmandu.
It sounds like a surprisingly good zoo (for Asia) PAT, and indeed, as you noted, some of the exhibits wouldn't look out of place in a Western zoo. The new tiger and leopard exhibits certianly suggest that the zoo is improving as it can, which is great, and the huge crowds are also a sign that they should be making enough money to continue redevelopment. I'd love to get to Nepal sometime, and would definitely check this zoo out, although maybe on a weekday. I suspect there is a very good chance the tigers are pure Bengal, but I'm not quite as confident that the Buffalo would be the wild variety, I think domestic would be more likely.
I figured that if anywhere is likely to have pure Bengal tigers, it's here. And I asked because they definitely didn't look the same as the domestic buffalo that I saw around Nepal and India. The local domestic buffalo have very small, tightly curled horns, are darker, and are more heavy-set, but the ones in the zoo are a lightish brown and had huge horns.
After the Earthquake : Nepal Earthquake: Kathmandu Zoo Animals Safe; Scores of Dogs, Cats Dead, Say Animal Welfare Groups
Plans for introduction of a ticketing system for Central Zoo in Kathmandu. The zoo is said to be visited by 1,1 mio visitors annually. Link: Central Zoo to introduce online ticketing system within current fiscal
