Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/TAMIL NADU: Indian authorities are all set to relocate 1,000 crocodiles from the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust, in Tamil Nadu, to Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani-owned Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre in Gujrat.
The Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre in Gujrat is almost 1,200 miles away from the breeding centre in Chennai city.
Indian Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Relocating crocodiles
India’s zoo regulator approved the crocodiles’ transfer last year and about 300 crocodiles had so far been relocated to Gujarat in one year.
Officials at the 8.5-acre breeding centre in Madras told the BBC that the mugger crocodiles were being relocated because of the overcrowding that often leads to fatal fights.
The curator of the centre, Nikhil Whitaker, said that hundreds of crocodile eggs were destroyed every year because of overpopulation and overcrowding.
He said that the decision to shift the Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani crocodiles to Gujrat had been taken to give the rest of the reptiles a better space to live comfortably.
The Madras Crocodile Bank Trust has relocated its crocodiles to zoos and protected areas across India. But this was for the first time that such a huge number of crocodiles were being shifted to a 425-acre zoo in Gujarat’s Jamnagar city, and owned by Ambani.
Indian billionaire ambani-owned zoo officials said that they will give adequate space, food and care for the crocodiles.
The Madras breeding centre, started in 1976, aimed to conserve muggers, saltwater crocodiles and gharials.
Initially, the centre had around 40 crocodiles, and the goal was to protect the reptiles so that they could multiply and their breeds be released into the wild to replenish their habitats.
However, in 1994, the Indian government put a ban on releasing captive-bred crocodiles into the wild. Since the ban was imposed, the bank had to struggle to relocate crocodiles every from time to time to zoos and wildlife sanctuaries across the country as wildlife areas were shrinking. As zoos across India were taking in only a limited number of crocodiles, the centre in Madras had been running out of space.
