Arignar Anna Zoological Park - Programmes and Activities

Programmes and Activities

The park has a zoo club, comprising college students, which was formed in 1997. The club helps keep the premises clean, and the members also conduct educational programmes and carry out patrols.

Following the death of a llama at the park after swallowing a plastic bag, plastic materials have been banned inside the park premises. Visitors are frisked at the entrance to restrict all plastic goods. The members of the zoo club are 98 percent successful in controlling the entry of plastic materials inside the park. The zoo also plans to introduce 'Friends of the Zoo' programme in line with the National Zoo Policy, prepared by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests in 1998.

The park launched a zoo newsletter in 2000 to serve as a source of current news and developments in the park. Efforts are being made to publish the newsletter at regular intervals.

From 22 to 24 September 2000, the park conducted a workshop for keeping and breeding amphibians in captivity for the first time in India.

The park, along with the Chennai Snake Park, Madras Crocodile Bank and the Mysore Zoo, is slated to become a nodal point for captive breeding of endangered pythons in the country, especially the Indian rock python (Python molurus) and reticulated python (Python reticulatus).

In 2007, the zoo started to construct a separate breeding enclosure for the lion-tailed macaque, proposing to bring under Foreign Animal Exchange Programme. The enclosure was built at a cost of ₹ 1.6 million at a silent, remote place in the park to provide a natural habitat for the animals and to ensure breeding. The total enclosure measures about 3,000 sq m, including three rooms with about 250 sq ft. Three pairs of macaque could be kept in these rooms. The habitat is planted with fruit-bearing trees, including gooseberry and mangoes.

In July 2008, the world's first non-invasive birth control surgery on mugger crocodiles was performed in the park by the surgeons of the Madras Veterinary College to control breeding and inbreeding.

In September 2008, the park initiated Adopt An Animal, an animal adoptation programme, which has seen a few takers so far in the state, with less than 20 sponsors, mostly individuals and companies, coming forward. The first adoptation began with adopting a spotted deer, a peacock, two lovebirds and a parrot in June 2009. The park has received funds to a tune of ₹ 2.3 million from individuals and organisations for adopting animals between August 2010 and March 2011.

The park has developed an informative and illustrative guide in collaboration with the Centre for Environment Education (CEE), Ahmedabad, providing zoo ethics and comprehensive information including road map to the animal enclosures and visitor amenities.

In 2012, for the first time in the country, the park adopted 'social grouping' of animals in captivity, where members of same species would be kept together, to showcase how they interact in groups.