No more lonely nights for one-horned male rhino at Sipahejala

AGARTALA: The one-horned male rhino ambling its way through the greens of Sipahejala Zoo in Tripura will at last get a female company, courtesy an animal exchange programme sanctioned by the Central Zoo Authority.

A female one-horned rhino would be brought from the Sanjay Gandhi Botanical and Zoological Garden in Patna under the programme to give company to Pradip, the male rhino, who had never seen a female of the species ever since it was brought to the zoo in 1994.

Ajit Bhowmik, the director of the zoo, said, "We desperately needed a female one-horned rhino to engage in mating with Pradip, the lone one-horned male rhino".

The exchange programme aims at increasing the count of rapidly disappearing species of clouded leopards, pigtailed macaques and spectacled langoors in the Sipahejala Zoo, housed in the Sipahejala sanctuary, he said.

The Central Zoo Authority under the Environment and Forests Ministry had given permission to go ahead with the exchange programme, he said.

The one-horned rhino is mainly found at Kaziranga in Assam, Nepal and parts of South Africa.

"We also demanded a Hippopotamus from the zoo in Patna and drew attention of the CZA, but the project is yet to be cleared," he said.

Sipahejala sanctuary, situated about 20 km from state's capital Agartala, is a hot spot of bio-diversity which came into existence in 1972.