Nourishing the wild

BENGALURU: Finding the money to feed 25 Asiatic elephants 350kg of green grass (and rice balls and ragi balls) every day is not an easy task, and Bengaluru Bannerghatta Biological Park (BBBP) has been struggling to find the means to do so since the pandemic put paid to a huge source of revenue: visitors. Annual visitorship of over 16 lakh dropped to zero last year when a national lockdown was declared, prompting Park authorities to pursue donation and adoption schemes aggressively. The nourishment of 2,300 animals of 103 species depended on it.

“Last year we had over 230 donors and clocked over `3 crore in donations. This year in April and May alone we got 85 donors and have collected over `20 lakh. We believe opening the one-day adoption scheme contributed to a spike in just two months. Donors have adopted 105 animals so far,” said a Park official who declined to be named.

Adoptive animal parents include people from Bengaluru, different districts of Karnataka like Chitradurga, Tumakuru, and even other states such as Himachal Pradesh and Telangana. Among the donors from Bengaluru are Shreyas PS and Karan Prasad, alumni of BMS College of Engineering, Bengaluru. They created a group of 45 alumni to raise funds for adoption. “We raised over `80,000 in the past month to adopt three animals for six months.

We have adopted the Royal Bengal tiger, Indian leopard and grey wolves. We believe it is the need of the hour to ensure animals are not left starving. The health of the animals is prime to the ecosystem,” says Shreyas. Before the Covid-19 pandemic dealt a blow to physical visits, the Park’s annual revenue averaged `30 crore in financial years 2018-19 and 2019-20.

“After the pandemic hit, we earned just one-fifth of last year’s total revenue. We had to open adoption drives to look after the management and animals,” another official said. Most of the expenditure the Park incurs is for feeding the animals, particularly the Asiatic elephants (It takes `1,75,000 a year to feed one jumbo). Other animals which consume large amounts of food include Royal Bengal tigers, lions, leopards, and giraffes.