Rain and bad roads reduce footfall at BBP

Incessant rains and bad roads has drastically cut the footfall at Bannerghatta Biological Park (BBP).

At least a kilometre and a half of the road leading to the zoo, from the Bannerghatta police station is narrow and single lane riddled with potholes. The road is slushy and slippery as construction material used to fill the potholes on temporary basis.

According to Public Works Department officials tenders have been floated to concretise the road connected to BBP.

“The potholes on the road were filled up 10-15 days back, but they have opened up again because of the heavy rainfall,” a PWD official said.

That is not all the gram panchayat had also filled up the potholes for the benefit of locals, but that has also washed away. Matters have become even worse with the city experiencing unprecedented rain since a fortnight.

“We greeted 20,840 visitors on October 1, this number has dropped to 3126 on October 14 and 6172 on October 15. On October 1 we collected a revenue of Rs 23,76,640 from ticket sales, but on October 14 and 15 the management has earned Rs 6,72,265 and Rs 10,97,535, respectively,” said Santosh Kumar, BBP Executive Director.

Drop in visitors

He said that animal keepers and zoo management have also reported a drop in the number of visitors over the last 15 days.

“The crowd is not as much as it used to be during holidays or during festival. This is shocking,” he said.

“So far, the zoo has not been closed for visitors due to heavy rainfall and Kumar assured that it will not be closed also. “We had closed down the safari for a day after the death of animal keeper Anji.

“We had also closed down one of the tiger safari routes because of maintenance works for just two days. But no safari has been closed down because of the rainfall. We can detour the safari routes if one route is non- motorable. And this will also be done, when all option are closed down. The safari will and zoo will not be closed for visitors,” Kumar assured.