Vandalur Reserve Forest is a protected area located in the suburb of

Vandalur Vandalur is a census town and residential locality in southern part of the metropolitan city of Chennai, India. It is a neighbourhood in the southwestern part of Chennai. Vandalur serves as the southern gateway to Chennai city. It has the Arig ...

in the southwestern part of

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

, about 30 km from the city centre. It is bordered by the Grand Southern Trunk (GST) Road in the west and Suddhanandha Bharathi Street on the northern and the eastern sides, and is intersected by the Vandalur–Kelambakkam Road on the southern side. The reserve forest contains

Arignar Anna Zoological Park Arignar Anna Zoological Park (abbreviated AAZP), also known as the Vandalur Zoo, is a zoological garden located in Vandalur, is in the southwestern part of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, about from the Chennai Central and from Chennai Airport. Establish ...

, the largest

zoological garden A zoo (short for zoological garden; also called an animal park or menagerie) is a facility in which animals are kept within enclosures for public exhibition and often bred for conservation purposes. The term ''zoological garden'' refers to zool ...

in the

Indian Subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...

History

In 1976, a portion of the reserve forest covering was demarcated by the

Tamil Nadu Forest Department The Madras Forest Department, now officially, Tamil Nadu Forest Department, is a government department of Tamil Nadu. The department is responsible for managing all the protected areas and forests plus environmental and wildlife related issues ...

as the new location for the Madras Zoo, initially located in Park Town. Work started in 1979 at an initial cost of 75 million, and the zoo was opened to public on 24 July 1985 as the Arignar Anna Zoological Park. In 2001, another of land from the reserve forest, located adjacent to the zoo, was augmented with the zoo to build a rescue and rehabilitation center for confiscated and abandoned wild animals, increasing the zoo's size to .

References

{{coord, 12.894268, 80.096684, display=title Geography of Chennai Protected areas of Tamil Nadu Reserved forests of India Protected areas with year of establishment missing

History

See also

References