Vantara's Origin Story: How Anant Ambani's Project Became A Haven For The Wild
Vantara is focused on creating best-in-class animal conservation and care practices, including state-of-the-art healthcare, hospitals, research and academic centres
Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Jamnagar’s Vantara and toured the sprawling facility, observing the advanced veterinary care provided and spending some heartwarming moments with the resident animals.
The prime minister played with and fed Asiatic Lion cubs, a rare Clouded Leopard cub, and a White Lion cub that was born at Vantara after its mother’s rescue. He also learned about the centre’s Caracal breeding program, crucial for the preservation of this increasingly rare species.
related stories
He also shared warm moments with rescued chimpanzees, a playful Orangutan, and observed a submerged Hippopotamus and crocodiles apart from patting an Okapi, undertaking a walk among zebras, feeding a giraffe and a rhino calf that was orphaned as her mother died at the facility.
Here’s looking back at Vantara’s origin story:
It was February 2024 when a passion project transformed into one of the biggest initiatives to rescue, treat, care for, and rehabilitate injured, abused, and threatened animals, both in India and abroad.
As Reliance Industries and Reliance Foundation announced the launch of their Vantara (Star of the Forest) programme, the spotlight shifted to Anant Ambani. The director on the boards of RIL and Reliance Foundation — who is also spearheading Reliance’s ambitious renewable energy business in Jamnagar and is responsible for leading Reliance’s journey to become a ‘Net Carbon Zero’ company by 2035 — conceptualised and birthed the initiative under his passionate leadership.
Spread over 3,000 acres within the Green Belt of Reliance’s Jamnagar Refinery Complex in Gujarat, Vantara aims to be one of the leading contributors to conservation efforts globally.
By working with leading experts in animal care and welfare, Vantara has converted a sprawling 3,000-acre space into a jungle-like environment that mimics the natural, enriching, lush and verdant habitat for the rescued species to thrive in.
Vantara is focused on creating best-in-class animal conservation and care practices, including state-of-the-art healthcare, hospitals, research and academic centres. Within its programmes, Vantara also focuses on integrating advanced research and collaboration with reputed international universities and organisations such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).
Over the last few years, the programme has rescued more than 200 elephants, and thousands of other animals, reptiles and birds from unsafe situations. It has undertaken initiatives in key species, including rhino, leopard and crocodile rehabilitation.
Speaking to CNN-News18, Anant Ambani had shared how his mother, philanthropist Nita Ambani, had been a big influence behind the project.
“So, my mother has always been a great inspiration to me. My mother, when I was a young boy and we were going, I was, I think, 12 years old, we were travelling from Jaipur to Ranthambore. In the middle, on the road, we saw a young elephant with a ‘mahavat’ in the peak heat, and the elephant was walking a little weirdly," he said.
“I told my mom, we want to rescue it. So that was the first elephant. And we had no idea how to take care of elephants. So we got the elephant, we kept it. And then we said, we’ll build slowly, slowly. Boond, boond se sagar banta hai. At that time we did not even know what to feed the elephant. We would do what the ‘mahavat’ says. We had no scientific knowledge. We built scientific knowledge over a period of, I think, a decade and more. Today we have a highly professional team, more than 300-400 professionals, taking care of the elephants."
Sharing the idea behind Vantara, Anant Ambani had said: “Something that drives my cause is animal welfare. There are a lot of people working [for human welfare] but in animal welfare, there are few people working. I think I was the chosen one and I was fortunate enough that God’s blessings… that I could do Seva of animals. For me, in today’s life, you can’t see God but I see God within every animal. They say in our dharm that in a cow, there are 64 crore ‘devtas’. But for me, not only in a cow, but I see in every animal. So it’s my giving back to society."
The Centre has a 1 lakh sqft area for hospital and medical research centre. The hospital and research centre possess the most advanced technology with an ICU, MRI, CT scan, X-ray, ultrasound, endoscopy, dental scalar, lithotripsy, dialysis, OR1 technology that enables live videoconferences for surgeries and blood plasma separator.
Over 2,000+ animals across 43 species are under the care of the Rescue & Rehabilitation Centre. For about 7 endangered species of Indian as well as foreign animals, the Centre has started conservation breeding programs with the objective of having a viable reserve population to repopulate the populations of endangered species in their native habitats to save them from extinction.
Today, the Vantara ecosystem has provided a new lease of life and hope to over 200 elephants, over 300 large felines such as leopards, tigers, lions, jaguars etc., over 300 herbivores such as deer and over 1,200 reptiles such as crocodiles, snakes and turtles.
- Location :
- First Published: