It seems that City Hall is the source of some of the more outlandish proposals jostling for attention on the airwaves these days. Whether the members of that august institution have been overcome by a fit of mania in the twilight of their official lifespan, or whether they have become bored doing what they are supposed to be doing, to wit, cleaning the city and digging the drains, is difficult to determine. But there they were the week before last sputtering on about petting zoos in every green space over which they exercise some jurisdiction. Or at least, their Town Clerk was.
So it seems the hapless citizens of the capital – who, it might be noted, are about to sweep the current incumbents of the horseshoe table out of office ‒ are to be the beneficiaries of a petting zoo in Merriman Mall and another in the Promenade Gardens. And yes, this will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the ever ebullient Mr Royston King informed a sceptical public. It must be that we have all become so inured to the babbling, bunkum and just plain balderdash emanating from Ignatius Scoles’ elegant edifice over the years, that no one was moved to comment. Until yesterday, that is, when Mr Roopan wrote us a letter calling the plan to have a petting zoo in the Promenade Gardens “outrageous.”
He is right, of course. In the first place, there are all kinds of areas where hundreds of millions of dollars would be better spent to maintain this city, and in the second, even if there were a case to be made for more petting zoos within the capital’s perimeter – and there isn’t – then the Promenade Gardens is simply not one of the spots where one should be located.
The gardens were created out of one half of the Parade Ground, where the then colony militia used to drill, and, it might be added, where some of the rebels of the 1823 rising were hanged. After Emancipation, there was little need for it in relation to the militia function, and in the 1840s there was a proposal to convert it into a public garden. This idea was finally adopted by the then Town Council in 1851, and a garden was created out of half of the Parade Ground with the help of public subscriptions. It had seats, arbours and eventually a bandstand, and was intended as a quiet area of recreation, where the citizens of Georgetown could enjoy the plants and the flowers in peace.
In other words, it is already one of those “green recreational spaces” that Mr King is always so loquacious about, and which he now intends to debase with the introduction of a petting zoo. In other words, this environmental advocate is proposing to considerably reduce the Promenade’s garden area, remove some of the flowers and greenery, inflict a blemish on the surroundings and degrade the peaceful atmosphere. What is wrong with City Hall? Why can’t a traditional garden remain a garden without the councillors and their Town Clerk whittling it down to create something else entirely? So much for a greener Georgetown.
Having said that, we don’t need a petting zoo on Merriman Mall either. Anyone who wants to play with animals can amble off down the road a bit, and go to the petting zoo in the Botanical Gardens. Apart from the huge amount of money which would be required to set up such a facility, it would also be very expensive to maintain if the animals are to be properly fed and cared for. The animals would require shelter from the rain and sun, which would do nothing for the aesthetics of the area, in addition to which, the Merriman Mall space is too small for the purpose if the council is not to open itself to charges of mistreating animals.
Which brings us back to something which has been said before, not least by several prominent citizens a while ago: First, why is City Hall going ahead with all these grandiose plans when the Mayor and Councillors have a little over three weeks left in office and those whom the citizens vote in on March 8 might have other ideas entirely? And secondly, why are such controversial measures being contemplated when there has been no prior consultation whatsoever with those who live in Georgetown? The whole idea of local government elections was to give people a voice about what happens in their own locales. Clearly City Hall in general and the Town Clerk in particular are not in tandem with what the central government has in mind where this is concerned.
Unfortunately, where zoos are concerned, the Town Clerk is not the only one with some bizarre notions. Towards the end of last year, then Minister of Governance Raphael Trotman said there was to be a “zoo to zoo exchange” with Hyde Park Zoo of the UK, whereby the local zoo will receive two peacocks, two pairs of ostriches, one pair of antelopes, a pair of lion cubs and three zebras.
They can’t be serious. In the first place, Guyana’s record in looking after exotic animals is abysmal. In a letter to this newspaper in February 2015, Syeada Manbodh related how the zoo’s last elephant, Kamla, was electrocuted by a loose wire and two of the three lions died from injections of expired drugs. The third lion too was a victim of a “shortage of resources and poor management practices.”
Well of course, the plan is (and it is not the first one of its kind) to put resources into the zoo and train personnel, etc, but there is another problem. Lions, zebras, antelopes and ostriches in their natural habitats require space, which surely doesn’t exist in the Georgetown Zoo. It is cruelty to confine such creatures in limited cages, and most international zoos of any reputation try to avoid that. It is not that we lack the land space where at some later time we could not create a safari park style ‘zoo,’ but at the moment we should avoid bringing in animals to suffer in cramped conditions next to the Botanical Gardens.
In fact Ms Manbodh’s recommendation was only to acquire new animals when “infrastructure and services are strong,” and even then, just to focus on the animals of Guyana.
In the meantime one wonders where exactly they are going to put the lions, the antelopes and the zebras. In the petting zoo, perhaps?
