Siddhi Dharmadhikari
Pune, 3rd April 2022: The Rajiv Gandhi Zoological Park and Wildlife Research Centre, located at Katraj, has opened its doors to the crowd after a gap of two years on March 20. The zoo had shut its doors on March 14, 2020, due to the rising cases of Covid-19 in the city and has been waiting for an order from the higher authorities to reopen.
The tickets are priced at Rs 40 for adults and Rs 10 for children. Although the zoo is relying on the manual ticketing system, management also initiated an online ticketing system to control crowds.
Since March 2020, the zoo has been closed since the nationwide lockdown was first announced in the wake of Covid-19. As soon as citizens of Pune received an official notice from PMC regarding the reopening of the zoo, excitement was at its peak in children as well as in adults.
When asked about the reopening and development as well as bringing of new animals into the zoo, people said to Punekar News that most of them are excited to see tigers.
“My child loves this zoo. And she is very excited to see the tiger and we hope to see it too”, said one of the visitors.
Another visitor explained “I have already visited this zoo but it is my first time bringing my children here. As soon as I got to know about the reopening and development of the zoo, I was excited to visit it again but this time with my children”.
It is seen that most children aged below 15 are excited to see wild animals like tigers, leopards, lions, etc. But some citizens were there to explore the famous ‘Sneak Park’ and to see the new animals like wild cats and Shekhru, etc.
While talking to PunekarNews.in, Dr Rajkumar Jadhav, director, Rajiv Gandhi Zoological Park and Wildlife Research Centre informed that “It was a lockdown for the people but not for us. PMC was helping us in every kind of way to run this zoo. We had decided to make some changes and this pandemic gave us the chance to do needed changes in the zoo. We went through some development and construction work as management was planning to bring new animals into the zoo.”
“No one lost their job from this particular zoo. Everyone was working here. Starting from animal caretakers to the workers who keep this zoo clean and neat; everyone was working including me”, Dr Jadhav added further.
Dr Jadhav said that around 16 thousand people visited the zoo on the very first day (March 20) after the lockdown. “And till today the numbers are kind of the same.”
Dr Jadhav appealed to citizens to follow all the protocols guided by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the number of Covid-19 affected patients is increasing on a daily basis in China and South Korea.
