The deer enclosure at Nandankanan zoological park. Telegraph picture. (Below) Report on the animal exchange programme at the zoo published in The Telegraph on August 24.

Bhubaneswar, Aug 26: The deaths of two Manipuri deer in Nandankanan Zoo has once again put a question mark on the safety of animals in the zoological park and during transport.

Of the three Manipuri deer that arrived in the zoo from Assam on Tuesday, one died the same night. Another Manipuri deer, which was already with the zoo before the guests arrived, died in its enclosure the next day.

While zoo officials attributed the first death to travel-related injury and translocation trauma, the second Manipuri deer died of old age, kidney trauma and internal haemorrhage. For the first case, an expert was called for the post-mortem from the College of Veterinary Science, Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT). In the second case, the post-mortem was performed by a zoo veterinary team.

The post-mortem report in the first case detected broken bones in the cervical region of the animal which indicated that the injury was severe leading to translocation trauma after shifting to the new enclosure.

Zoo assistant director Kamal Lochan Purohit said the animals went through the mandatory health check-up by the zoo veterinarians. A four-member team from Nandankanan had also checked the animals at Assam State Zoo in Guwahati before they left for Bhubaneswar on August 21. The animals were doing well.

“Mishaps are common during transfer. We transport the animals following animal transport protocol but they do get injured during the long train journey,’’ he said. He added: “The rest of the nine animals are doing fine.’’ Ten animals had been transported from the Assam zoo to Nandankanan.

Secretary, People For Animals, Jiban Ballav Das said zoo authorities always claimed that the animals were transported following protocol. “But some time back a giraffe had also died while being transported from Calcutta Zoo. This speaks volumes of their animal welfare strategies. The zoo might be well managed strategically, but animal welfare measures are still wanting. Animals are being exchanged without any rational equation. Why should a zoo give two white tigers, two gharial crocodiles and four zebra finch birds for Manipuri deer, leopards, jungle cats and slow lorises? The loss means that the exchange programmes are no longer proper.’’

A frequent visitor to the zoo and student of Ruchika High School Adisha Tripathy said: “The zoo authorities are spending so much money on the animals, they should not transport them to places that entails long hours of travel.’’

Wildlife expert Biswajit Mohanty said the zoo authorities do adopt protocol to transport animals, but if the enclosures were not adequately cushioned or are bigger than the size of the animal there were chances that it would move and try to escape, injuring its neck or other body part in the process. He advocated that zoos should do away with exchange programmes in which animals had to be transported for thousands of kilometres.

“The concept of zoo should be abolished. Only rescued animals such as a baby elephant left by herds or an injured animal or bird from the forests should be given shelter there. In fact, spending on zoos indirectly means that we are torturing animals, as they are forced to stay in confined surroundings for years together simply to entertain people. Spending on zoos has also gone up dramatically. If the government concentrates on spending that amount for conservation efforts in forests, more animals would be benefited,’’ he argued.

The zoo authorities, however, maintained that exchange programmes help in the in-house population growth of species acquired. With the induction of new animals in Nandankanan, there are now 118 species in the zoo and the total number of animals has gone up to 1,178.