Country’s lone zoo struggles to sustain with no visitors for months amid the pandemic

For years, the zoo has survived on entry fees paid by the public, but now the facility is looking up to the government for support to feed animals and pay staff.

Until the third week of March, it was just another regular day at the Central Zoo in Jawalakhel, Lalitpur. People queued for tickets—on Saturdays and public holidays, the number of visitors would simply double—to visit the country’s only formal zoo which hosts over 125 species—around 1,000 individual mammals, birds and reptiles among others.