Entertainment · Yunusabad District

Tashkent Zoo

Founded in 1924 and since 1997 set in 22.7 hectares of landscaped enclosures beside the Botanical Garden, home to more than 3,000 animals.

Soviet era1924; 19972 h1 min read

Photo: Сулайманов Рустам · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

History

The zoo was set up in 1924 by biologists of the Central Asian University on part of the Governor-General of Turkestan's former country estate, around an existing small menagerie, and covered about 3 hectares; by the late 1940s it kept more than 200 species. In 1994 the government began building a new zoo with landscape-style enclosures on part of the Botanical Garden, and the zoo moved there on 1 September 1997. It has been a member of the Euro-Asian Regional Association of Zoos and Aquariums since 1998.

Today

The zoo covers 22.7 hectares and keeps more than 3,000 animals, with species counts given variously from 349 (2004) to 600. The aquarium section has a marine system with sharks and other sea fish, and the zoo specialises in breeding birds of prey such as vultures, buzzards and lammergeiers, as well as research on breeding rare species.

In 2004 the collection comprised 58 mammal, 74 bird, 26 reptile and amphibian and 191 fish species, and the zoo helped found the zoos of Ashgabat, Termez, Dushanbe and Almaty.