Vadodara’s Sayajibaug zoo has put forth a proposal before the Standing Committee of the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) seeking an emergency expense of Rs 1.72 lakh incurred to treat lioness Gale, who was injured in November 2021 and died later, as well as to contain the spread of the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) that broke out in the enclosure of the Sambar deer, killing 13 of 14 members of the species in the zoo.
“For the treatment of the lioness as well as the deer… the zoo incurred a total emergency expenditure of Rs 1.72 lakh… The budget has
allocated a total expenditure of Rs 1.10 crore for the zoo,” the proposal states.
Sayajibaug Zoo curator Dr Pratyush Patankar said while the zoo authorities were busy attending to Gale in her last days in November, the caretakers of Sambar deer had spotted symptoms of FMD. “We immediately began treating the herd of Sambars and were able to contain the virus in the enclosure itself… although two spotted deer also reported some symptoms, they have recovered. However, unfortunately, we lost 13 of the 14 Sambar deer that the zoo had. There is one three-and-a-half-month-old fawn – the lone surviving Sambar in the enclosure because it did not get infected at that time,” Patankar said.
The zoo, in its internal investigation, ascertained that the infection could have been transmitted from the fodder. “The FMD virus is highly contagious and can spread from one infected animal to another even through the caretakers. The source, however, was fodder. When we conducted our probe, we realized that the fodder we were sourcing was from a place where strays also had access to the stacks… So, following the outbreak, we changed the supplier and are now procuring the fodder from a fenced farm that does not have stray animals around,” Patankar said.
The zoo authorities, Patankar said, have written to the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests of Gujarat seeking new Sambar deer for the zoo. “The zoo had already been looking for a new male Sambar deer to be brought in from another zoo, even before this tragedy. That is because Sayajibaug, for decades, has only seen inbreeding among the herd, and so the deer were immunocompromised for a while. Inbreeding increases susceptibility to diseases in the newer generations… We had planned to separate some young females from that herd and try to introduce a new male deer to get a variation in the genes of the offspring.”
The zoo authorities are yet to determine if the lone surviving Sambar fawn is a male or a female. “The fawn is too young and among herbivores, it usually takes a few months to distinctly identify the sex organs,” Patankar said.
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