Is Dushanbe Zoo Worth Visiting?

Dushanbe Zoo is the only zoo in Tajikistan, so if you want to see animals anywhere in the country, this is where you'll go. It opened in 1960 and, by the city's own account in 2024, has never been repaired or rehabilitated since: a 2019 terrarium fire killed more than 25 animals, and officials say the state budget still isn't enough to properly feed the roughly 600 that remain. Go for an hour if you're already in the city; don't build a trip around it.

What not to miss

Featured location Dushanbe Zoo Dushanbe, Tajikistan The grounds stand on the Luchob riverbank on Ismoili Somoni Avenue, beside Pamir Stadium, and take up about twice the stadium's footprint. The mild local climate permits tropical animals to live outdoors.

The zoo sits in central Dushanbe, on the Luchob riverbank on Ismoili Somoni Avenue, next to Pamir Stadium. It opened in 1960, and by 1974 it held 1,059 animals of 254 species, rated one of the best zoos in the Soviet Union. Tajikistan's civil war undid that: 95% of the animals on show died in the fighting of the 1990s, and the collection has never returned to its former scale. Today it keeps about 600 animals, including male and female lions, a jaguar and a snow leopard, brown and black bears, Bactrian camels, wolves, jackals, foxes and raccoons, birds of prey such as owls, vultures, golden eagles and falcons, and reptiles including snakes, caimans and lizards, shown indoors.

Despite the visible strain on its budget, the zoo has been a member of the Eurasian Regional Association of Zoos and Aquariums since 2007. It hasn't always gone well for new arrivals: a hippopotamus named Tursunboi came from Shymkent Zoo in Kazakhstan in July 2011, after four years of negotiation, and died just seven months later, at age seven.

Getting there

As of a 2025 report, Dushanbe's Architecture and Construction Committee said the zoo is set to relocate to the Hisor district, about five kilometres outside the capital, with plans already drawn up and awaiting approval. That 2025 report gave no completion date, and an earlier 2024 report quoted the city's own deputy mayor saying the location itself hadn't been settled:

We still can't decide where to move the zoo. Therefore, it is still premature to speak about the beginning of construction of the new Dushanbe Zoo

The planned replacement is designed for 1,500 animals across 13 hectares -- roughly half as many again as the 985 animals of 135 species the zoo held as of early 2020, cared for by a staff of 50, only 32 of them specialists. None of this means the current, central-Dushanbe site is closing soon: confirm before you go, since we found no official website or venue-published hours or ticket prices to point you to.

Other wildlife nearby

If the zoo leaves you wanting to see Tajikistan's wildlife on its own terms, that's Tajik National Park, in the east of the country. Established in 1992 and recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2013, it covers 26,116.74 square kilometres, a little over 18% of Tajikistan's entire land area. It shelters brown bears, snow leopards, wolves, markhor and Marco Polo sheep, deep in the Pamir Mountains, a very different undertaking from an afternoon at the zoo.