Know Your City: In Junagadh, 160-year-old Sakkarbaug Zoo remains a favourite

Visitors at Sakkarbaug Zoo in Junagadh. (Express photo)

Painted storks making abrupt landings on these trees and then perching gaily in company with egrets is an unmistakable sight one sees from the road. If one is lucky enough, one may get to see a flock of Indian flying foxes making merry on the fruits of a small banyan tree barely 10 feet high in the parking lot of the zoo itself.

The backdrop of the majestic Mount Girnar and the tree-lined bank of River Sonrakh add to the aesthetics of this historic zoo, one of the oldest and biggest in India, even though a flash flood had given some nervous moments to its animals and their keepers recently.

Flash flood scare

On July 22 this year, Junagadh, the hill-station-like city in Gujarat’s water-starved Saurashtra region, got a scare as torrential rain fell on Mount Girnar and the city caused a flash flood. Most parts of the city were flooded as the Sonrakh and Kalvo rivers, which pass through the city, swelled.

Videos, which went viral on social media, showed the Sonrakh’s waters inundating the reception area of the Sakkarbaug Zoological Park (SBZP), popularly known as Sakkarbaug Zoo. The river seemed to have changed its course, diverting towards the popular zoo on its northern bank. The floodwaters did indeed breach the zoo’s perimeter wall but all the animals and birds inside survived.

Like the ebbs and flow of time since it was established in 1863 by Nawab Mahobatkhanji Babi-II, the then-ruler of the erstwhile princely state of Junagadh, Sakkarbaug Zoo survived the latest flood threat. The flash flood deposited a thick layer of mud in some parts of the zoo even though floodwaters receded within a few hours.

The zoo reopened its gates to visitors two days later, on July 25, and has been basking under the sun and play of white fluffy clouds in azure skies.

Sakkarbaug derives its name from a well, says V J Rana, an Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer. (Express Photo)

“Over the past few years, we have developed an extensive network of stormwater drains in the zoo. These drains helped in preventing prolonged waterlogging and we could normalise the situation within a few hours,” says Nirav Makwana, Range Forest Officer (RFO), Sakkarbaug Zoo.

However, this was not the first time that the Sonrakh was in spate. The city had witnessed a similar flood in the early 1980s. Sonrakh had flooded Sakkarabaug in 2007-08 and it was after this flood that the forest department of Gujarat, which owns and manages the zoo, started drawing plans for stormwater drains even as Junagadh city lacks it to date.

In historic times, there used to be a dam called Sudarshan Talav across the Sonrakh when Junagadh, then known as Girinagar, was the regional headquarters of the empire of Emperor Ashoka. However, floods have repeatedly breached the dam, say historians.

Charm of the zoo

After watching the videos of the flash flood inundating parts of the Sakkarbaug Zoo, some residents have been visiting it just to see how it coped with the floods.

Rutvik Chandvaniya, 22, a resident of Junagadh city, and his friend Manish Solanki were among a few such visitors on September 1.

“I have been visiting the zoo since I was a child. I like to come to Sakkarbaug during winter when most of the animals and birds are more active. However, I had seen those videos showing Sonrakh flooding the zoo. Therefore, I and my friend Manish, after visiting Indreshwar Mahadev temple nearby, thought of checking how Sakkarbaug looks after the flash flood and came here,” Chandvaniya, who is pursuing an MBA degree said, adding he saw the sections of perimeter wall having been washed away by floodwaters.

However, Chandvaniya says the charm of the environs of SBZP hits its peak during monsoon.

“I like birds and tall trees in the zoo attract so many free-ranging birds. I really enjoy watching woodpeckers pounding trunks of trees with their beaks and those painted storks on banyan trees. As a locale, Sakkarbaug Zoo looks beautiful during monsoon,” says the student, testifying to the appeal of the zoo even to Junagadh residents.

“For us dwellers of Junagadh, Bhavnath Taleti, the foothills of Mount Girnar are the first choice for an outing and Sakkarbaug Zoo comes second. But the preference changes from guests to guests and children love to visit the zoo instead of any other place,” he adds.

Save the gate, which is now used as the zoo’s exit, and a few other structures, most of the old structures have been redeveloped by the forest department while keeping the original design and architecture intact. The zoo management has also added amenities, like paved walkways, benches, and drinking water points among others.

“These amenities have been added for good. Earlier, one used to glide through the park as there was nowhere one could sit and observe the animals for a long time or have a break with the family. With the added amenities, the park is good for spending an entire day with family,” Chandvaniya says.

Sweet as sugar

Sakkarbaug derives its name from a well, says V J Rana, an Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer who served as director of SBZP for many years before retiring as chief conservator of forests recently.

“During the reign of Nawab Mahobatkhanji Babi-II, the place where the present-day zoo is located used to be a six-hectare garden having a well inside it. Water in the well was potable. In the popular imagination, that water was as palatable as sakkar (sugar) hence, the place came to be known as Sakkarbaug,” Rana says

“Forest officers like P P Raval, J R Asari, R D Katara etc, who served in the zoo, made great efforts to stop mining in the vicinity of the zoo and expand limits of the zoo in the 1980s and 1990s.”

An SBZP report of 2017-18 shows Sakkarbaug used to house the personal collection of Nawab Mahobatkhanji Babi-II, including Asiatic and African lions, tigers, cheetahs, leopards, ratel etc, and those animals would be carried through the city in processions taken out during festivals and celebrations.

Of Asiatic lions and Indian grey wolves

Today, the zoo is a 200-hectare complex, facilitating a range of wildlife-related activities. It hosts more than 100 captive Asiatic lions and over 80 Indian grey wolves, which, SBZP officers say, is the largest collection of these two Schedule-I species in any zoo in India. In all, it also houses more than 1,000 individuals of 106 species of animals, birds and reptiles. They include 864 mammals of 39 species, around 270 birds of 52 species, including greater adjutant stork, and around 70 reptiles of 15 species.

SBZP is the coordinating zoo for the conservation breeding of Asiatic lions, the endangered species of big cats, as well as that of Indian wild assess. It is also a participating zoo for the conservation breeding of Indian grey wolves and vultures. It also runs a programme of conservation breeding of four-horned antelopes and red junglefowl. It has a nursery and care centre for cubs born to large carnivores.

Sasan and Devaliya safari parks are well known for lion safaris inside the Gir forest. But one can also go on a similar safari inside Sakkarbaug Zoo on a route that covers Gujarat’s native species like lions and sloth bears as well others like the Himalayan bears, dholes (Indian wild dogs), tigers etc. The zoo, contiguous to the border of Girnar Wildlife Sanctuary which is one of the protected areas where Asiatic lions range freely, is so large that it has within it a camping area for organising nature education camps for students.

Since Sakkarbaug was designed more than 160 years ago, enclosures afford views of animals and birds from a close range, unlike modern zoos where enclosures are larger and visitors can only observe their inhabitants from longer distances.

Thanks to scores of temples on Mount Girnar and other peaks nearby, Junagadh is a major hub of religious tourism in Gujarat. The city is also known for Narsinh Mehta Choro, the residence of medieval-era poet Narsinh Mehta who was a devotee of Lord Krishna, and Narsinh Mehta Talav, a lake in the heart of the city.

To promote eco-tourism, the Gujarat Forest Department had started lion safaris inside the Girnar Wildlife Sanctuary in January 2021. The safaris begin from Indreshwar Naka near the border of SBZP.

Footfall

The zoo, the only one to be owned and run by the Forest Department of Gujarat, has been attracting visitors in large numbers. As per official data, 9.5 lakh people visited Sakkarbaug in 2019-20. Due to the pandemic, the numbers fell to 3.16 lakh in 2020-21 before recovering to 8.5 lakh in 2021-22. After the pandemic-related restrictions were lifted, the footfall at Sakkarbaug zoomed to 12.15 lakh in 2022-23 with a record 21,152 people visiting the zoo in a single day on Dussehra last year.

In five months of the current financial year, 3.55 lakh people have visited the zoo with officials saying that average footfall remains around 6,000 per day during festive seasons. “This year, the footfall has been affected by Cyclone Biparjoy and the flash flood. However, we are seeing a significant recovery in weeks since,” says Akshay Joshi, Deputy Conservator of Forests (DCF) and Director, SBZP.