Dubai Safari Park

Dubai: It’s full steam ahead for Dubai’s new zoo with Safari Park expected to open by mid-2016, confirmed a senior official on Sunday.

Covering a total area of 119 hectares at a cost of Dh150 million, the zoo is expected to open its doors to the public within the third quarter of next year.

“The new zoo will be home to almost 1,000 animals from around the world, and out of those, there will be more than 350 species of rare and endangered animals,” said Eng Hussain Nasser Lootah, director general of Dubai Municipality.

The plans for opening a new zoo to replace the current 1.5 hectare zoo at Jumeirah Road has been in the pipeline for nearly a decade, and since construction on the project started taking shape from 2012, the animals can finally look forward to relocating to their new home at Al Warqa opposite Dragon Mart.

Hanan Hassan Al Aradi, an official at Dubai Municipality working on the project, told Gulf News that the Safari Park’s design and layout incorporate the best practices from world-renowned safaris and zoos. “A team of specialists visited a number of the world’s best and important zoos, such as those in Indonesia, Singapore, Austria, Germany and the San Diego Zoo. It is important to note that we did not only use their best practices but also adapted them to suit the needs of Dubai,” she said.

Safari Park has been designed to be environmentally-friendly and will use solar energy, “and a hybrid operational system will be used to run the irrigation network, which will also include water recycling, waste disposal and other recycling facilities,” said Lootah.