What this means is simple: before any exchange, an animal will be isolated from the rest and kept in a separate enclosure for almost a month. The idea: all diseases are removed from its body. The same will be done with animals coming into the Capital’s zoo from other regions, or coutries.

The formal announcement of the ‘Rescue Quarantine Centre’ will be made on Tuesday, Delhi Zoo director D N Singh said. “We are still in the process of making it. We will make it public only once everything is in place,” Singh told Newsline on Monday.

The zoo here has regular exchanges of animals — at present two jaguar cubs from South America are being bred in the zoo. The animals will also form part of exchange programme later on if other countries come forward to take them. The zoo had got giraffes from Kolkata around a year back, among other exchanges.

The zoo has a small centre for quarantining at present but the new one will have separate enclosures for almost every species. “Work will be easier and the animals safer,” a staff member of the zoo said.

According to the Central Zoo Authority (CZA), the idea of the centre was in the pipeline for long due to its requirement during animal exchanges. More importantly, a quarantine centre is required whenever any animal is rescued from the wild. “An animal from the wild cannot be allowed to mix with other animals immediately after it is brought,” a CZA official said. “For, it may contain many foreign germs.”