Wolves at Islamabad zoo to be flown abroad

Two wolves at Islamabad’s Marghazar zoo will be transferred to Jordan on December 6, President Arif Alvi was told during a briefing on Tuesday.

The process to transfer them will be completed soon. The decision has been taken on the orders of the Islamabad High Court to move all animals to sanctuaries. The relocation orders because of the incompetency of the facility’s management to take care of the animals there.

Alvi went to the zoo for a visit and was briefed about Kaavan, the zoo’s sole elephant, flight to Cambodia.

The plight of Kaavan, a 36-year-old Asiatic elephant, has drawn international condemnation and highlighted the woeful state of Islamabad’s zoo. In May, the Islamabad High Court ordered that all animals at the zoo should be moved to sanctuaries.

Following the ruling, Austria-based animal welfare and rescue group Four Paws International was enlisted to help move Kaavan to a sanctuary in Cambodia.

A transport crate has been built and the elephant is being habituated to it before being flown to a 25,000-acre Cambodian wildlife sanctuary in a jet.

Two lions die during relocation

Earlier this year, a pair of lions died while being transferred from the Islamabad zoo to the Mohiuddin Private Breeding Farm in Lahore.

A video surfaced of the caretakers setting a fire inside the enclosure of the animals and yelling to make them move in an attempt to knock the big cats unconscious rather than using a tranquilizer.

A case was registered against the caretakers under Section 5 of the Animal Act 1990. The law punishes people for killing any animal in an unnecessarily cruel manner. Those convicted under the law must pay a fine of Rs200 and can be imprisoned for up to six months.

After the incident, the World Wide Fund for Nature decided to cut ties with the Islamabad wildlife board for the time being.