New international zoo will be an added attraction in city, says BMC

Modelled after the famous Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in London, the park which is now called Veer Jijabai Udyan is laid out in a Renaissance Axial Plan — a style popular in town planning projects adopted for European cities.

Apart from its unique collection of trees and plants, the garden has heritage features such as a wooden conservatory, fountains, statues, a clock tower and a finely decorated three-arched gate.

The garden added more species of plants over the decades even as a zoo grew in it. Dr Marselin Almeida whose report emphasises the need to save the park said, “There is nothing like it in the entire city and it is the only place where you can see so many plant species in such a small area.”

However, Anil Anjarkar, director of the zoo said the city needs the new facility. “A zoo has to serve the two purposes of conservation and education. The new zoo will educate people about biodiversity and conservation,” he said.

Corporator and chairman of BMC’s standing committee Rahul Shevale said the new project will be the new attraction in Mumbai. “Apart from giving Mumbaikars, the feel of an international zoo, it will attract visitors from outside the city,” he said.

After BMC announced its ‘international zoo’ project, volunteers from groups like BNHS formed the Save Rani Bagh Botanical Garden Action Committee and sought to be part of the hearings on the new project. They said the plan was flawed and quoted experts who warned that fewer pathways in the new plan will not be able to accommodate the rush of visitors, leading to stampedes. In December 2009, the curator of Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew wrote to BMC commissioner saying that the changes proposed in the redevelopment plan will destroy the historical renaissance layout, besides robbing the crowded city of a green lung.

The Botanical Survey of India has also supported the stand that the garden as a botanical park valuable for the study of plant life. In March 2010, activists met union minister for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh to get his support.

Every day, an estimated 8,000 people visit the park and on holidays, their numbers reach 35,000. “It is probably the only place in the city where children will ever get the feeling of being in a forest,” said Hutokshi Rustomfram of the action committee.

Over the last two decades, two adjacent plots have been acquired for the zoo’s expansion. Both these plots are marked as ‘green zones’ in the city’s development plan. However, the BMC is building offices in the 2.87-acre Miller compound, while the three-acre Poddar Mill compound was being used as a nursery and now houses a concrete mixing plant that supplies the construction in the Miller plot. Another 6.7-acre parcel of land, now housing a defunct factory, is planned to be added to the garden. These will take the park’s area to over 55 acres.

According to opponents of the new project, the area will be too small to accommodate all the planned facilities. They have argued that such zoos require at least 200 acres which is only available in the suburbs on in the city’s outskirts.

Anjarkar said, “The Singapore zoo has only 30 acres. We do not plan to increase the number of animal species and we will be following all norms laid out by the Central Zoo Authority,” he said. According to Shevale, the BMC is planning a zoo in Powai where some of the bird and animal species will be shifted. But conservationists feel that the new project cannot be built without changing the park’s characteristics as a botanical garden.