Leopard pair at Lahore Zoo get new home

Enclosure has a hilly terrain to keep the leopards as close as possible to their natural habitat

LAHORE: Kavo and Nidara, a leopard pair, got a new home at the Lahore Zoo on Wednesday.

The animals were shifted to a newly constructed bigger enclosure following a ceremony attended by Wildlife Department director general Khalid Ayaz, Lahore Zoo director Shafqat Ali and deputy director Mudassar Hassan.

Kiran Saleem, an education officer at the Zoo, said the enclosure had been built keeping in mind the natural habitat of the leopards. “It has a hilly terrain to provide the leopards with topography kept as close as possible to their natural habitat,” she said.



Saleem said the earlier enclosure for leopards at the Zoo lacked enough space for leopards to freely move around in the open.

The construction of the new leopard house had been completed in 2012 under a master plan initiated in 2005. Other facilities added to the Zoo under the project were a monkey house, a reptile house, a walk-through aviary and a café. The project had been completed at a cost of Rs125 million.

Saleem said the Zoo had only one leopard at the completion of the new enclosure. She said two female and a male leopard were acquired a few months after the completion of the enclosure but none of them were shifted there. She said the administration first wanted to let them get along with one another.

Saleem hoped that with relocation the pair’s mating behaviour would be closer to that in their natural habitat.

Additionally, she said the bigger enclosure would allow visitors a better view of leopards.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 11^th, 2015.