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A picnic spot with deer frolicking about, a canvas for a photoshoot, a place where fireflies would gather in the dead of the night — the Deer Park in Delhi’s Hauz Khas has meant different things to different people over its 55 years in existence. But now, it is the end of a city institution as we know it.
The Central Zoo Authority (CZA), in a recent order, canceled A N Jha Deer Park’s recognition as a ‘mini zoo’ — effectively ordering its closure — The Indian Express has learnt. And the nearly 600 deer it houses will be shifted to forest areas in Rajasthan and Delhi to augment their prey base. The Delhi Development Authority (DDA), under whose jurisdiction it falls’, will maintain the park as a protected forest.
Behind this twin move is the “overcrowding” at the park — its deer population has grown unchecked over the years because of the absence of a natural predator. The park, which houses deer, rabbits and ducks, is an oasis of green amid the increasingly crowded neighbourhoods abutting it.
The initial proposal in 2022 was to transfer all its deer to forest areas in Rajasthan. Authorities decided at a CZA meeting in January that some of the deer would be moved to Delhi’s Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary, as reported by The Indian Express in March.
At this meeting held under the chairmanship of the CZA Member Secretary to discuss the proposal of transferring the deer and cancelling recognition of the park, Chief Wildlife Warden of Delhi Suneesh Buxy had said that the “number of leopards in the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary, Delhi, has risen,” and “there is a need to supplement the prey base,” according to the CZA’s order.
“Accordingly, requested that the spotted deer (Axis axis) from the zoo may be translocated in the sanctuary,” the order recorded as a comment from Buxy.
The CZA Member Secretary had then said that the spotted deer population, which was identified to have been 565 in the DDA’s communications to the CZA in 2022, may have increased to around 600, and “the same shall be transferred in ratio (70:30) to the Rajasthan Forest Department & Forest Department of NCT of Delhi respectively.”
On why the closure of the deer park was necessitated, a senior DDA official said that a few deer were brought to the park in the 1960s and the increase in numbers since then has meant that the DDA’s officers were not trained to handle the large numbers.
Asked when the animals are likely to be moved out of the park, the official said that would be up to the forest department officials in Rajasthan and Delhi.
A senior official of the Forest Department in Delhi said that it is now the breeding season for the animals and the deer can only be moved after the breeding season is over, possibly in winter or after the winter. “They need space for movement, along with grass and plants for foraging. This makes the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary a good habitat for the deer,” the official said.
A senior official of the Rajasthan forest department said the deer will be moved to reserves including the Mukundra and Ramgarh-Vishdhari tiger reserves, for “prey-base augmentation”.
Responding to an observation from the CZA’s Technical Committee that the zoo site is “an important urban green space and therefore, it should be preserved”, the DDA had said at the meeting in January that the site is notified as protected forest and will be preserved and maintained as forest.
The order noted that protocol prescribed by the CZA and guidelines of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on ‘re-introduction and other conservation translocations’ are to be followed.
The CZA’s order also said that the recognition of the Deer Park was valid up to August 2021, and an application for renewal of recognition was received in September 2021 from the DDA. To ensure compliance with norms, the CZA had deputed an officer to evaluate the zoo in April 2022, and this evaluation was carried out in September 2022. In the meantime, the CZA received correspondence from the Chief Wildlife Warden of Rajasthan, addressed to the Principal Commissioner (Personnel, Horticulture and Landscape) of the DDA, on the “acquisition of 550 chital” from the deer park, according to the order.
The evaluation report and the proposal for transfer of the animals was then considered by the CZA’s Technical Committee in September last year.
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