Nepal's Central Zoo opens after 8 months with COVID precautions

Lalitpur [Nepal], December 10 (ANI): The Central Zoo at Jawalakhel in Nepal's Lalitpur District opened its gates for visitors after a hiatus of more than eight months on Thursday with health precautions and a cap on the number of visitors.
The only zoo in the Himalayan Nation had remained closed after COVID-19 induced lockdown starting March earlier this year. From Thursday it started welcoming visitors who will now find differences in the wake of rising COVID-19 infections.
"We have made masks compulsory, ask visitors to sanitise themselves, do the foot dip as well as stand on line but in the circle marked in at ticket counter as well the display areas around the animals. There are a number of precautionary measures that we have taken and the zoo is not fully opened since our children park and picnic area are still closed for the visitors," Lina Chalise, spokesperson at the Central Zoo told ANI.
Following safety protocols of WHO to open up public spaces, the National Trust for Nature Conservation which has been looking after the zoo has limited number of visitors to 800 on daily basis and tour around its premises abiding by time cap of two and half hours.
This is a dramatic decrease from around 3,000 visitors who use to flock to animal enclosure on daily basis before onset of COVID-19 pandemic.
"I feel so good as I return back after a long interval of time. I got to explore a lot of things and found many new changes like social distancing, sanitisation and many others," Alina Neupane, a young visitor who came to the Central Zoo along with her friends on Thursday late afternoon told ANI.
The zoo authorities have deployed staff to prevent visitors from flouting safety measures.
Alarmed by the first case of Human to Animal transmission of virus at a zoo in the United States, central zoo of Nepal has heightened distance between animals in the enclosure and visitors who visit the menagerie.
"We used to adopt precautionary measures like spraying casaulin, lime powders around enclosures. Now we have intensified it. We carry out timely sanitisation and disinfection process. We have also placed a green wire to maintain a gap between animal displays or the enclosure and the visitor. There's a certain gap which ensures that transmission of the disease remains minimum," said Chalise, information officer as well as the spokesperson of the zoo.
Spread over six hectares of land, the Central Zoo is home to over 119 species of endangered animals, birds and reptiles. As per the record of Central Zoo, there are a total of 33 mammals, 61 birds, eight amphibians and 17 species of fish.
Visitors from abroad are required to pay Nrs 750 to enter central zoo while nationals from SAARC state are charged Nrs 500 each while it has been fixed Nrs 150 for Nepali citizens out of which students and elderly are only charged Nrs 90 for entry. (ANI)