National Zoological Gardens - Dehiwala

It was the conspicuous collaboration of two brothers John Hagenbeck and his brother Carl who was twenty two years younger than him whose initiation gave rise to the National Zoological Gardens and what it is today when John Hagenbeck bought two and a half acres of land at Dehiwela and began a private animal collection centre.

Black Rhino, new to the zoo
The centre was started and subsequently used by John to hold the wild animals before exporting them to Europe , a trade he began more than sixty eight years ago in Sri Lanka.

It was only in 1936 that the centre was taken over by the government and today the objectives of the zoo are merely conservation ,animal welfare, breeding research and education.

John's attraction for Sri Lanka had been since the age of twenty when he first visited Ceylon in 1886 where he had indulged in many fields of business.