Dubai: Dubai Safari, the long-awaited upcoming zoo park, is 30 per cent complete and expected to open in the third quarter of 2016, an official said on Saturday.
Hussain Lootah, Dubai Municipality Director-General, said on Saturday that the massive Dh1 billion project will cover 119 hectares of land.
Dubai Safari, coming up in Al Warqa’a area, will replace the existing decades-old Dubai Zoo.
The plan to relocate roughly 1,000 animals was developed and revised many times in the past decade, pushing back the opening of Dubai Safari.
The project was first announced in 2009 but work restarted in 2012 after a pause in the intervening years.
The new wildlife attraction, developed by Dubai Municipality, will come up opposite Dragon Mart. The municipality is transforming the site from a disused landfill for construction waste into a tourist magnet.
Lootah said because of the park’s wide open location, solar energy will be used to generate electricity to run the irrigation system, official vehicles on site, and recreational facilities. The park will also recycle water and use treated water for irrigation.
The park’s site was the subject of an intensive study in the planning phase. Specialised technical committees were formed to select animals and distribute them to their allocated places according to the nature of the geographical distribution.
Dubai Safari aims to become a world standard for wildlife habitat.
The first phase of construction took a long time to complete because the site used to be a landfill, so the municipality had to first clean and level the site, Lootah said.
The inner roads, parking lots and infrastructure facilities came in second, with irrigation, drainage, drinking water system, and fire extinguisher networks built and completed.
There will be 3,600 parking spaces spread across 9.4 hectares, walkways for pedestrians and eco-friendly transport such as trams, bicycles and electrical vehicles.
The park has been designed to provide a variety of conditions to suit different animals, using modern interactive methods in animal control and wildlife. They will be taken care of by specialist veterinarians inside the park.
Lootah said one feature setting the park apart from others is its open area that has been designed over an area of 22 hectares. Visitors will be able to move among a variety of animals while riding air-conditioned jeeps over an hour-long tour. This will give the guests a chance to come up close to the park’s animals and get to see how they react in their environment.
Visitors will also be able to go through an exceptional experience by visiting a dark cave designed to display nocturnal animals by using 3D techniques.
A safari trip on the back of an Asian elephant will also be available for guests.
