Aurangabad zoo to shift two tigers to Mumbai

With the city zoo having more number of tigers than it can accommodate, the Aurangabad civic body in Maharashtra has decided to shift two of these striped animals to a zoo in Mumbai, an official has said.

An eight-year-old tigress, Samruddhi, at the Siddharth Udyan here gave birth to four cubs in April this year.

With this, the toll number of tigers in the zoo here has gone up to 12, but its capacity is to accommodate only eight such carnivores, a civic official said.

The zoos at Solapur and Mumbai recently put forth their demand before the Central Zoo Authority for two tigers each.

"Hence, in view of more number of tigers as compared to the space available in the Siddharth Udyan, we have decided to give away two of the felines to the Mumbai zoo," Aurangabad Mayor Nandkumar Ghodele told reporters here on Tuesday.

In exchange, the city civic body may seek some animals from the zoo located at Byculla in Mumbai, he said.

The Siddharth Udyan was set up in 1985 and started housing tigers since 1995, when two big cats were shifted here from the Nandankanan Zoological Park in Odisha. Thereafter, in 2005, two tigers were shifted here from Chandigarh.

In the 24 years of the zoo's existence, 23 tiger cubs have been born at the facility. Of these, 11 were earlier sent to zoos in Indore, Mumbai, Ranchi and Pune, another official said.