India's Richest Family Building World's Largest Zoo

Great Argus said:
Apparently the 2 week stint was enough the courts have given Vantara immunity from any further cases being raised against them and the option to seek defamation - a very interesting move indeed.

Reliance’s Vantara cleared of PIL allegations: What SC’s investigation team found
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Powerful people silencing the media is a global phenomenon of course but it's still slightly surprising, or perhaps just disappointing, to keep seeing it in black and white. Two weeks looking at some paperwork, total immunity. Money talks. And it simply undermines any view that it's a legitimate operation; if it is it wouldn't need this degree of 'protection'.
 
lintworm said:
This only makes it more likely that the outcome of this "investigation" was already known beforehand and was ordered to silence criticism.
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I mean from what little public information there is it's not at all hard to put two and two together. The EAZA refused to work with them and the place does not work with any respected accrediting association. They've been trying to silence criticism since the start. The CITES database shows 90% of zoo imports into India since 2019 come from countries with known animal black markets. Equally there's been more than one species imported that is known to be 100% illegally acquired. Top that with a mere 2 week investigation that comes up empty handed of any wrong doing and gives them a legal shield? Pretty hard to buy that "clean" label.

Edit - also furthers my feelings that CITES permits are about as useful for conservation as a piece of junk mail. Several species appearing on the database should be a red flag but nothing from them at all. Sure seems like they turn a blind eye a lot as long as the right boxes get checked.
 
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Great Argus said:
I mean from what little public information there is it's not at all hard to put two and two together. The EAZA refused to work with them and the place does not work with any respected accrediting association. They've been trying to silence criticism since the start. The CITES database shows 90% of zoo imports into India since 2019 come from countries with known animal black markets. Equally there's been more than one species imported that is known to be 100% illegally acquired. Top that with a mere 2 week investigation that comes up empty handed of any wrong doing and gives them a legal shield? Pretty hard to buy that "clean" label.

Edit - also furthers my feelings that CITES permits are about as useful for conservation as a piece of junk mail. Several species appearing on the database should be a red flag but nothing from them at all. Sure seems like they turn a blind eye a lot as long as the right boxes get checked.
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I guess the issue with CITES is that it relies wholly on the law enforcement and explicit consent of national authorities to act on any wrongdoing. So in terms of 'teeth' it relies on the process that we can see failing here in India. There should be numerous flags raised on these massive quantities of animals moving around, but instead it falls to what often happens with these sort of initiatives...regulation only of the willing.
 
Something interesting that I don't think has been mentioned yet. The latest stocklists (april 2023 to march 2024) lists 3889 animals as being present at the start, with a further 6447 animals acquired within that time period. Nothing "strange" here, just a very high number of animals. It gets interesting when you look at the number of deaths during that time period:

The official stocklist only lists 24 animal deaths within that same time period. They cite their state-of-the-art hospital as a reason why the mortality rate is that low for all their animals that were rescued from distress. But anyone who has looked at stocklists from respected zoos can tell you that these mortality rates are in the range from implausible to complete bullocks. It is statistically impossible to have such a low mortality rate (0.23% of all animals or 0.62% when you only take into account animals kept already at the start of the period). It means they are telling us that out of 1233 green iguanas the mortality was 0. The same goes for their 184 lions, 94 Arabian oryx, 69 ring-tailed lemurs, 100+ gazelles, 275 rose-ringed parakeets, 152 Indian peafowl and 160 tigers. Their leopard program was less successful as out of 257 leopards 1 died.

Edit: more animals died than in the previous year, when 11 animals died, but the % of animals dying decreased...

We can all guess what is really happening and this does mean that we need to be wary of the number of animals that are reportedly present at the facility.

It will be interesting how these numbers develop when/if? the next animal inventory is published. I doubt we will see any more stock lists, but if then it is the question whether % of deaths will rise (which should be a certainty with animals that get older) or that we will again see huge leaps in husbandry success and the reversal of ageing.

Link to the stocklist:
https://cza.nic.in/uploads/documents/reports/english/AR_gzzrjamnagar_2324.pdf
 
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Most of Vantara's acquisitions are straight commercial purchases from animal traders, or trafficked animals. See these, plus the links in them. Vantara is the biggest live wildlife trafficking operation run by one facility in the world right now:

How DRC's endangered chimpanzees end up in a billionaire’s Indian zoo - Africa Geographic
Exposed: The big business of selling South Africa’s big cats to Ambani’s Indian mega-zoo - Currency News
https://www.researchgate.net/public...g_on_an_industrial_scale_with_billionaireRev/
 
lintworm said:
The official stocklist only lists 24 animal deaths within that same time period. They cite their state-of-the-art hospital as a reason why the mortality rate is that low for all their animals that were rescued from distress. But anyone who has looked at stocklists from respected zoos can tell you that these mortality rates are in the range from implausible to complete bullocks. It is statistically impossible to have such a low mortality rate (0.23% of all animals or 0.62% when you only take into account animals kept already at the start of the period). It means they are telling us that out of 1233 green iguanas the mortality was 0. The same goes for their 184 lions, 94 Arabian oryx, 69 ring-tailed lemurs, 100+ gazelles, 275 rose-ringed parakeets, 152 Indian peafowl and 160 tigers. Their leopard program was less successful as out of 257 leopards 1 died.
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This is very odd especially if you are running a "hospital" animals that come in especially reptiles would probably be in very rough shape and would need to inevitably be euthanized. When you are getting that many iguanas some are going to die from shock and other stress related factors.

Also, what are you doing with that many iguanas. I have never heard of anyone truly wanting to see a green iguana and they have 1233. They need to share there shipping method if none actually died because this would be ground breaking.
 
captain alligator said:
It seems Bennett's tree kangaroos are being kept at this zoo, but how exactly did they acquire this species? (However, since there are no photos, it is unclear whether they are actually being kept.)
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I'd assume the same way as most rarer animals ending up there: smuggling and then forging paperwork, especially considering Bennett's tree kangaroo lives in such a small range squarely within Australia, a country known for being strict about native wildlife exports.

I was also doing some poking around on CITES regarding animal imports into india between 2024 and 2025 (which i assume a large amount of it is going to Vantara). It seems the vast majority of reptile trade goes through Austria and Czechia, with a portion of these animals originating in Germany. Is there any particular reason as to why these countries seem to be hotspots for herp exports and what, if any, link to Vantara they have?
 
Randomname0183 said:
I
I was also doing some poking around on CITES regarding animal imports into india between 2024 and 2025 (which i assume a large amount of it is going to Vantara). It seems the vast majority of reptile trade goes through Austria and Czechia, with a portion of these animals originating in Germany. Is there any particular reason as to why these countries seem to be hotspots for herp exports and what, if any, link to Vantara they have?
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The vast majority of the Austrian export was from one reptile zoo owner/animal trader which declined any comment on that topic.
 
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