COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — To forestall the worst of Covid devastation, Sri Lanka imposed lockdowns and stopped flights from overseas for almost a yr, battering the financial system and drying up a significant tourism trade.
For animals within the island nation’s zoos, nonetheless, it’s been a jolly time.
Amid the absence of holiday makers, animal births within the zoos rose 25 p.c over the previous yr, in line with Ishini Wickremesinghe, the director normal of Sri Lanka’s Division of Nationwide Zoological Gardens. Significantly hanging, she stated, is that a number of animals that shouldn’t have a historical past of breeding in native zoos have given delivery.
“Animals are literally having a less-stress and relaxed time with no folks round,” she stated.
Sri Lanka closed its zoos in March 2020, briefly reopening to guests earlier this yr earlier than closing once more as coronavirus infections rose. Among the many animals which have bred for the primary time are a black swan, a white peacock and a nilgai, the most important antelope in Asia. Others which have produced offspring embrace an Arabian oryx, a black duck, a scimitar-horned oryx and a zebra.
“We even have three new lion cubs,” Ms. Wickremesinghe stated. “After years, the animals actually obtained break.”
The cubs are about six months previous now. With no guests round, grownup lions are free to roam round their enclosures and consort with potential mates.
At Sri Lanka’s wildlife parks, officers couldn’t affirm whether or not breeding was on the rise, however animals are “positively stress-free,” stated Manoj Vidyaratne, the warden of Yala Nationwide Park on the island’s southeastern coast. “Normally, we see about 400 automobiles within the park each day,” he stated, “however this time there isn’t a one.”
Creatures in captivity elsewhere, too, have taken benefit of the pandemic to procreate. Final April, two large pandas efficiently mated on the Hong Kong zoo, which was closed to guests because of the coronavirus.
Sri Lanka, an early success story in containing the unfold of the virus, has skilled a current surge and is recording almost 3,000 new each day infections, in line with a New York Instances database. The pandemic has worsened the financial woes of a rustic that was already struggling to get better from terrorist assaults in 2019.
Sri Lanka’s zoos, which home about 4,000 species, are among the many tourism-dependent nation’s main points of interest, drawing greater than three million guests a yr earlier than the pandemic.
Regardless of the impression on income, Ms. Wickremesinghe stated she hoped to maintain the zoos closed till circumstances drop, fearing that primates may catch Covid-19 from an contaminated customer. “We don’t know what to do if that occurs,” she stated.