Chennai Snake Park

The Chennai Snake Park, officially the Chennai Snake Park Trust, is a not-for-profit NGO constituted in 1972 by herpetologist Romulus Whitaker and is India's first reptile park. Also called the Guindy Snake Park, it's miles placed next to the Children's Park in the Guindy National Park campus. Located on the former home of the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust, the park is domestic to a huge range of snakes consisting of adders, pythons, vipers, cobras and different reptiles. The park won statutory reputation as a medium zoo from the Central Zoo Authority in 1995.

The park, formerly known as the Madras Snake Park Trust MSPT, was installed via the American-born naturalised Indian herpetologist Romulus Whitaker, who, before coming to India in 1967, had worked with the Miami Serpentarium at Florida, United States. On his arrival to India, he established a small snake park at Selaiyur village, a suburb of Chennai. In 1972, he acquired a bit of land in Guindy on hire from the Forest Department of the Government of Tamil Nadu and, with the help of a collection of naturalists from Chennai, installation a bigger park and shortly constituted a believe to manipulate its affairs.

The Board of Trustees consisted of Doris N. Chattopadhyaya, Harry Miller, M. V. Rajendran, S. Meenakshisundaram, M. Krishnan, Romulus Whitaker and A. N. Jagannatha Rao. In 1976 and 1988, ex officio trustees from various government institutions had been introduced to the board. The park underwent numerous preservation after 1994, inclusive of an aquarium for sea snakes and turtles and recovery of enclosures and extra facilities. In 1997, the park became renamed because the Chennai Snake Park, following the renaming of the town of Madras in 1996.