CHENNAI: The Arignar Anna Zoological Park, which reopened on Wednesday after a gap of five months, witnessed thinner crowds than usual even as the state government has restored the COVID-19 restrictions to near normalcy.
Popularly known as Vandalur Zoo, the park saw a footfall of 1,233, which officials say is a decent start. They expect the visitor flow to slowly increase and peak during the weekends.
Zoo director V Karunapriya, who was personally monitoring all the safety measures, told The New Indian Express that the zoo can accommodate 7,000 visitors at a given time while ensuring social distancing. "Taking various factors into consideration, we estimated the carrying capacity. We can safely handle 7,000 people at any given time."
Arriving at the maximum number of visitors which a zoo can safely (ensuring social distancing) accommodate in a day is of great importance to formulate further strategies to ensure safety of visitors, staff and zoo animals, officials said.
As reported by The New Indian Express earlier, public spaces with the possibility of crowding such as the children's park, nocturnal houses, butterfly park, aquarium, walk through the aviary, reptile house, underwater gharial, forest museum, interpretation centre, lion and deer safari remained closed to avoid congregation of visitors. CCTV surveillance and public address system was regularly used to regulate visitor movement inside the zoo.
According to the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) formulated for all zoological parks in the state, which was approved by the Chief Secretary, a squad team would be established to conduct regular patrolling on a daily basis to ensure that the approved guidelines and protocols are scrupulously followed.
"The team will consist of an assistant director/ Assistant Conservator of Forests level officer, two forest range officers, two foresters and two forest guards. The team's duty is to monitor the strict adherence of the SOP guidelines and inform the official in charge to implement corrective measures in case of any violations. All visitors shall be under CCTV surveillance, and a penalty of up to Rs 1,000 will be imposed against violators of SOP guidelines," a top zoo official told The New Indian Express.
As per the central government's directives, persons above 65 years of age, persons with co-morbidities, children below 10 years and pregnant women should avoid coming to the zoo. E-ticketing will be promoted to avoid manual collection of tickets from the zoo ticket counters, the SOP documents read.
The authorities also said animals are to be monitored very closely for their health especially with regard to clinical signs of COVID-19 using CCTV surveillance or first-hand information from the respective animal keepers.
"All animal keepers have been asked to refrain from touching or kissing the animals and also from unnecessary touching of cages. They should observe the gait, food remains, urine and faeces of all animal inmates. If any abnormalities are observed, this should be reported immediately to the concerned rangers, veterinary doctors and biologists without fail," a zoo official said.