On display: After 16 days in transit, 31 snakes slither in to Karachi zoo

Initial reports claimed the snakes were seized, but they have been imported by a private collector.

KARACHI: Overcoming the road blockades and braving the protests, hundreds of people came to the Karachi zoo on Monday to see 31 large snakes, which have been brought there as safekeeping for a few weeks.

On Sunday, a week after the pythons arrived at the airport, the customs officials handed them over to the Karachi Zoological Gardens after the importer failed to provide the relevant documents. The pythons were, in fact, imported by two young snake enthusiasts, who breed different species to raise awareness about non-venomous snakes and encourage others to keep them as pets.

The snakes, which include a non-venomous boa constrictor, reticulated, ball and Albino pythons, started their journey from Oklahoma in the United States nearly 16 days ago and had not eaten until Monday. The largest 17-foot-long reticulated python refused to eat but the 14-foot-long Albino python grabbed and swallowed a rabbit as soon as it was offered.

“We couldn’t have kept them in a small room so we had to hand them over to the zoo,” explained a Pakistan Customs spokesperson Qamar Thello. “The day the importer gives us the NOC, he can take the snakes.”



The importer needs to have a no-objection certificate from the National Council for Conservation of Wildlife (NCCW) if they want the custody of the snakes. “We didn’t know that an NOC was needed to bring the pythons,” said Adil Ahmed, the owner of the trading company that booked the shipment. “The request for the NOC has already been submitted and hopefully we’ll have it in a few days.”

Earlier, some customs officials claimed that they ‘seized’ an illegal consignment of pythons but their spokesperson later clarified that the consignment was stopped because the importer had incomplete documents.

“How can international trade on these pythons be illegal if they have been delivered from the United States and had made a stopover at the Hong Kong airport?” asked Ahmed.



But the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation administrator Muhammad Hussain Syed reached the airport as soon as the consignment was seized to announce that the snakes were the zoo’s property. He was unavailable for comments later.

Even the zoo director, Bashir Sadozai, struggled to explain who owned the snakes. “These have been gifted to us by customs officials,” he claimed.

The officials insisted that the species were rare but the importer said that all of these snakes are very common in the US, where people keep them as pets.

The entire cost of buying the snakes and their shipment to Pakistan comes down to around Rs400,000, which makes it affordable for the zoo administration to obtain as well. Sadozai claimed, however, that they don’t import pythons on their own because “their import is prohibited.” He failed to explain, however, how private collectors are able to import them.

The entrance fee to the reptile house where the snakes are being kept is Rs10 per person. On Monday, when public transport was thin on the roads, the zoo managed to sell up to 300 tickets. “We are expecting at least 3,000 visitors on Tuesday,” said a hopeful zoo official.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 19^th, 2013.