Anant Ambani's animal rehab centre: shelter for abused elephants - or private mega-zoo?

Last month, an image of an elephant sticking her trunk out of a lorry while being transported across India went viral, shocking wildlife activists and animal lovers.

Pratima, the 55-year-old elephant, was suffering from multiple ailments and was pregnant.

Despite her condition and the blistering heat, she and her calf were being driven 3,000km in a cramped lorry from Assam in north-eastern India to Vantara, a new private zoo and rehab centre in the western state of Gujarat.

The zoo is owned by Anant Ambani, the youngest son of one of Asia’s richest men and owner of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani.

The image of Pratima being transported caused some to question why the elephant was being ferried across the breadth of India in traumatic conditions, instead of being given treatment in her local habitat.

“It was heartbreaking – that visual of her trunk breaking free from the truck,” said Prerna Singh Bindra, wildlife conservationist and former member of National Board for Wildlife, a government-constituted apex body for wildlife conservation in India.

“Taking an ailing, pregnant elephant in a truck in such intense heat across the country is cruel and extremely stressful for the animal,” Ms Bindra told The National.

Alongside questions over the transport of animals, Vantara has also divided opinion across India, with some questioning whether a private zoo established by a billionaire is the best way to provide treatment for animals.

Vantara

Pratima is one of the 200 elephants at Vantara, which means Star of the Forest in Hindi. Its official name is the Greens Zoological, Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre, or the GZRRC.

According to the GZRRC, it received approval from India's Central Zoo Authority to establish a zoo in August 2020, before officially launching on February 26 this year.

Spanning 3,000 acres, the centre has been established on the green belt of Reliance's Jamnagar Refinery Complex, the largest petroleum refinery complex in the world.

The project is the brainchild of 29-year-old Anant Ambani, a self-confessed animal lover.

Vantara was launched ahead of his star-studded pre-wedding bash in March that was attended by many of the global elite, including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

“I see jeev seva (animal care) as a duty towards the Almighty as well as humanity,” Mr Ambani told the media.

“This is not a zoo, this is a service room,” he said, adding that he serves elephants “with the spirit of” serving Hindu deity Lord Ganesha, the elephant God.

Reliance says its centre is a “first-of-its-kind” initiative that focuses on rescue, treatment, care and rehabilitation for injured, abused and threatened animals.

The site has a 25,000 square-foot hospital and a medical research centre offering MRI, X-ray, ICU, CT scan, endoscopy, dialysis and ultrasound services for the animals, it says.

Elephant rescue

The zoo has been praised by some animal rights groups, as well as by big names in Bollywood, for rehoming elephants from captivity.

India is home to the world’s largest population of Asian elephants, but they are listed as endangered due to massive population decline.

There are nearly 30,000 elephants in the wild in India, according to the last survey conducted in 2017, while more than 2,600 elephants are being held captive in the country, according to the Ministry of Environment.

Of these, about 1,821 are under private ownership, being used for tourism, entertainment and religious purposes or temple processions, mainly in southern India.

Captive elephants have historically been subjected to torture. They live in abysmal conditions, are chained, hardly get any exercise or proper diets and are often subjected to noise.

According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals India, Vantara has worked hard to provide the elephants with a suitable environment.

“From what we have managed to see, Vantara has made every effort possible to ensure the animals get to live in an environment as close to their natural needs as can be reasonably expected at any rescue centre,” Khushboo Gupta, director of advocacy projects for Peta India, told The National.

Expansion

Other activists have questioned whether a massive privately owned zoo is the best way to rehabilitate animals.

Since rescuing its first elephant in 2008, Mr Ambani's project has grown and gained a range of animals transferred from elsewhere in India and from countries as far away as Argentina, at the site in Gujarat.

According to the GZRRC'S annual report from 2022-23, the centre is home to more than 2,000 animals. It has 200 leopards, 300 deer, 1,000 crocodiles and 4,700 birds. These include 26 Spix’s macaws, which are highly endangered birds native to Brazil.

“It is completely misguided and shows a vacuous appreciation of animals and wildlife,” said Dr T R Shankar Raman, senior nature scientist with the Nature Conservation Foundation in Mysuru, southern India. “When people worldwide are rethinking keeping animals in zoos, the last thing India needs is another zoo, and that too a private mega-zoo. This is antithetical to conservation."

“It is not merely one rich man's indulgence. This is a rich man's fetish with potentially disastrous consequences,” he told The National.

The zoo also has permits to import wildlife from Mexico, according to reports in Indian media.

There are reports that the zoo will receive 60 hippos, descendants of the four hippos that the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar illegally transferred from Africa, according to Lina Marcela De los Ríos Morales, director of animal protection and welfare at the environment ministry in the Colombian state of Antioquia.

Vantara did not reply to The National's queries regarding these plans.

Aside from an increase in other animals, Mr Ambani has said in interviews that he plans to expand the number of elephants at Vantara to 1,000, from the current 200.

Ms Bindra said the expansion of Vantara “raises serious issues of promoting wildlife in captivity”.

“Why this hankering for numbers of elephants if the proclaimed objective is a rescue centre? There is no conservation value to this facility,” she said.

“To me, such a facility raises questions of ethics, governance, and accountability. One can hold governments accountable – but how does a common citizen hold private individuals to account?”

Transport concerns

Vantara is allowed to keep captive elephants due to a recent change in Indian law.

The Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 prohibited the commercial trade of elephants. However, an amendment in the act was proposed in 2022 and notified in March this year.

The amendment allows individuals to keep elephants for “religious or any other purposes” which activists say is a vague term and could lead to exploitation of animals.

The new rules also allow the transfer of captive elephants permanently from one state to another.

“The amendments eased the trade and transport of elephants, which was previously disallowed. This has had a terrible effect on elephant conservation and welfare,” Dr Raman said.

“Elephants are being trucked across the country for the zoo in Gujarat as well as to temples and other places. Elephants should be conserved in wildlife reserves and captive facilities close to their natural habitats and certainly not be held captive in Gujarat for anyone's whim or for public display and entertainment.”

Several activists have filed petitions at courts demanding a halt to the transfer of the elephants to Vantara while many villagers in Odisha, Assam and Maharashtra states have opposed transfers of elephant from their natural habitat.

Prof Raman Sukumar, an eminent Indian elephant ecologist who has worked with the mammals for over 45 years, said transferring and keeping large numbers of elephants at one place is not an ideal method of rehabilitation.

“The main problem is the concentration of a large number of captive elephants, I see no purpose in that. The real role of captive elephants is for them to be integrated with management and conservation of [the] wild population,” Prof Sukumar told The National.

“I would have favoured Vantara in investing in different models of welfare of elephants in captivity across the country. The role of captive elephants cannot be reduced to singularity, the welfare of elephants in one location and by one person,” he said.

The rescued captive elephants are used by forest department veterinarians to travel through the jungles or are trained to drive away wild elephants from human habitats.

These roles would be lost if these captive elephants were kept at a facility like Vantara, said Prof Sukumar.

“It is important to understand the different regions and nuances of diversity of elephant cultures and situations and not feeding all elephants with high protein. It doesn’t work like this,” he said.

“We need a broad and practical vision of how we improve the conditions and determine the future role of captive elephants. There is a lack of focus on what should be done to captive elephants and their welfare management.”