Maharashtra’s first ever taxidermy centre will be inaugurated at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park on Thursday as part of its 55th World Wildlife Week celebration.

Taxidermy is the art of stuffing and preserving dead animals in its original skeleton and skin, displaying the animal in its lifelike state. The centre will be a workshop where carcasses of animals dying in sanctuaries and forests across the country would be restored as animal trophies. These trophies can then be displayed in museums for educational purpose, forest officials said.  

India has four national museums of natural history — in Bhopal, Mysore, Delhi and Bhubhaneshwar— where animal trophies are preserved. “But these centres merely stored animal trophies which have been there for over 60-70 years,” the officials said.

The proposal to start a full-fledged taxidermy centre at the park was approved earlier this year by former principal chief conservator of forest (PCCF) B Majumdar. He saw taxidermy as a dying art in India and wanted preservation of the art for educational purpose.

The new centre is a spacious three-room workshop built on a 1,000 sq-ft garage. “The first room will be utilised for skinning and separating skeleton, the second for modeling and moulding of the animal form and the third room for finishing and storage,” said Dr Santosh Gaikwad, an associate professor at the Bombay Veterinary College, who will be working from this workshop. Gaikwad, who is India’s only practicing taxidermist, is currently working on a lion and lioness, a python and his biggest challenge— an enormous elephant carcass from Vidarbha to be saved as a trophy.

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