Finally, Powai deer breathe free

January 30, 2009

Mumbai: About 85 deer languishing in an illegal enclosure at the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) Powai park for more than 40 years have finally found freedom. The state forest department on Thursday confirmed that the deer have been rehabilitated in the wild at the Tungareshwar wildlife sanctuary, nearly two years after the plan was finalised.

P N Munde, conservator of forest, SGNP-Borivali, said, “We shifted the deer nearly a month ago. The animals were transported in batches in special trucks as per the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) guidelines.”

According to B Majumdar, chief wildlife warden of Maharashtra, “First, the animals were all medically tested and declared fit for rehabilitation. Our other concerns were to remove the animals without causing them any trauma and ensure that the new habitat is closest to their original one.” Majumder added that as part of the rehabilitation, the animals were kept and fed in an enclosure at Tungareshwar for a few days before being exposed to the wild.

The issue of the illegal zoo was first reported by Newsline in April 2007, when animal welfare NGO Plants and Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) alleged that the deer were kept there illegally and in poor conditions and maintained by the BMC’s hydraulic department at a cost of over Rs 15 lakh a year. PAWS alleged that the deer faced floods every monsoon as the garden is situated in a low-lying area.

In February 2006, the BMC requested the forest officials to release the deer into Sanjay Gandhi National Park following which, the forest department seized the animals on April 1, 2006. They had stated that the BMC neither had permission from the Central Zoo Authority (CZA) nor the Wildlife Authority to keep them in their custody and display them.

The seizure was executed under the Wildlife Conservation Act of 1972 and Central Zoo Act of 1992. However, after the seizure, the animals were handed back to the BMC to be kept in the same conditions “till further instruction”.

Sunish Subramanian, member secretary of PAWS, who recently visited Tungareshwar to track the deer said, “For the last three years we have been repeatedly updating the plight of the deer to the forest officials and requesting to speed up the rehabilitation act. But it’s good news that besides the deer, several other animals that were kept captive in the park have also been freed. These included a couple of ducks, rabbits and other smaller wildlife.”