MARGHZAR ZOO:
With the departure of the world’s loneliest elephant, Islamabad’s zoo has closed — but its empty cages hold clues to its animals’ suffering
Six weeks ago, Kavan was finally freed from his prison, after a crusading Pakistani judge took an interest in the zoo’s problems and foreign activists led by the singer Cher took up his plight. On Nov. 30, the long-suffering elephant was flown in a custom-built steel box to a sanctuary in Cambodia. Animal lovers worldwide cheered.
After a long journey from Pakistan, lonely elephant Kavan was greeted in Cambodia Nov. 30 by American singer Cher, who has been campaigning for his transfer. (Reuters)
But for years, while the zoo attracted thousands of visitors, many of its animals met harsh or unknown fates. Rights groups and journalists reported that animals were chronically underfed and poorly attended when sick. Dozens died, often of causes that were never explained. Others went missing or were allegedly sold for profit.
“There was only one qualified veterinarian at the zoo, and none of the other staff had the training to manage or care for animals,” said Muhammad bin Naviz, founder of an informal group called Friends of the Islamabad Zoo. “We visited all the time, and we tried to point out problems we saw, but nobody listened.” He said workers were often hired through political connections or made money on concessions. “Nobody gave a d---.”
The Marghazar Zoo is now closed, its cages empty, the grounds to be turned into a modern wildlife conservation park. Malik Amin Aslam, the top official at the Ministry of Climate Change, said the closure has created an “opportunity to start from scratch and do things right.” He blamed most of the zoo’s past problems on “mismanagement.”
“The lesson is clear,” he said. “We have to care for our animals and nature. We have to have proper administration, not let unreliable people be in charge.”
Other city zoos in Pakistan have had similarly troubled histories. A giraffe died several weeks ago at the Peshawar Zoo in northwest Pakistan, and lions were recently discovered starving at the Karachi zoo. The sprawling Lahore zoo, about 150 years old, has lost chimpanzees, Bengal tigers and black bears to disease in recent years, and other animals have reportedly shown signs of severe psychological illness.
Cruel animal practices persist out of the public eye, including dogfighting and bearbaiting. Two Himalayan brown bears at the Islamabad zoo were once “dancing bears” who were forced to perform in public, their teeth removed and their snouts pierced with rope. They were relocated to a wildlife sanctuary in Jordan last month in poor health.
The Islamabad zoo, a high-profile attraction in the nation’s capital since it opened in 1978, has aroused growing concern among animal lovers for years. Last spring, a group petitioned the Islamabad High Court for help. In May, Chief Justice Athar Minallah issued a scathing 67-page ruling, in which he found the zoo had kept its animals in “extremely disturbing” and “shockingly deplorable conditions,” exhibiting them for entertainment while ignoring their health and well-being.
He also cited contemporary rulings from around the world in which judges had ordered suffering elephants, orangutans and killer whales freed from captivity. “While it may be arguable that a chimpanzee is not a ‘person,’ ” one ruling stated, “there is no doubt that it is not merely a thing.”
Minallah described in detail the Marghazar animals’ plight. Kaavan’s rocking, he wrote, was an “obvious indication of loneliness, distress and suffering.” The African lions were “visibly malnourished.” The Himalayan brown bears were confined in “extremely small” cement enclosures, with one in need of “immediate medical assistance” for a botched chest surgery that had become badly infected.
The ruling aroused an emotional public uproar. Some Pakistanis expressed appreciation and gratitude; others said the judge had brought shame and dishonor to their country. The controversy escalated as plans developed to send Kavan to Cambodia and the ailing brown bears to Jordan. One critic called the relocations “a shameful endorsement of international propaganda that Pakistan is incompetent and cruel to animals.”
But the frantic effort to relocate so many beasts led to a gruesome tragedy that seemed to reinforce that image. The two lions were slated to move to a private farm in Lahore, 170 miles away. To force them into a travel cage, two untrained handlers lit a fire in their enclosure, then immediately loaded the terrified pair into a truck. Both soon died of suffocation, stress and smoke inhalation.
Today, the lions’ dilapidated cage sits empty, covered with rusty wire and torn cloth. It seems far too small to contain two powerful and lithe creatures, who never left its confines. A nearby sign bears a photograph of two majestic lions in the African wild and describes them as highly social animals whose “roar may be heard over a great distance at sunrise and sunset.”
The rescue of Kaavan, arranged by the Four Paws International veterinary charity, and the lions’ deaths led some Pakistanis to reflect on why they had long enjoyed visiting the zoo without thinking about how the captive animals lived.
“Pakistan is not a vile place incapable of keeping animals. It’s just that animals have not been on the priority list,” compared with basic problems such as health and education, one reader wrote to Dawn newspaper. Many people didn’t know Kaavan was suffering until he made headlines, Saadia Owais said. “Now that the story has been told, we know that wild animals feel the same pain as we do. They can be as lonely as we feel.”
Pakistan’s Ministry of Climate Change took control of the Marghazar Zoo in early 2020 amid complaints about the conditions. The ministry is now working to reinvent the 82-acre campus as a conservation park with a learning center for children and open-space living areas for iconic and endangered animals native to Pakistan. It is to be managed and redeveloped through the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board.
On a warm day in December,
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