Earlier this week we reported that a Zoo Restoration and Enhancement Project had been launched by the Protected Areas Commission. Under the combative title, ‘Wildlife Warriors: Unite for Conservation’ it involves a programme to enhance the structures and surroundings of the Georgetown Zoo as well as the Botanical Gardens. Commissioner Jason Fraser was reported as explaining that this was just the initial phase of the project which involved painting and cleaning various animal enclosures as well as the tree trunks and benches in the gardens. Future endeavours, he went on to say, would include exercises like animal rehabilitation and feeding.
The first thing to be mentioned is that painting tree trunks is not necessarily to be recommended, depending on what is used. It was the late botanist John Warrington who once wrote a weekly gardening column for this newspaper who first pointed it out, after some unusually invigorated local agency decided to paint the trunks of the trees on Vlissengen Road. If white limestone is used, that should not present a problem, but any oil-based paint damages the protective bark and clogs a tree’s pores, interfering with its capacity to absorb water and nutrients. In other words such paint will kill the tree slowly. So much for conservation if oil paint is indeed what is being used – although hopefully it is not.
The second point relates to the zoo per se, and one wonders why it is that only future endeavours would encompass animal rehabilitation and feeding. It might have been thought that this would have been a priority and not a one-off exercise undertaken by volunteers. One would like to think the Commission would envisage implementing a continuous plan of action to ensure the animals are properly fed and well cared for, and that that would start immediately; painting their cages could wait. It is of course conceivable that what was conveyed did not fully describe the intention.
What is less in doubt is that a year ago when this newspaper visited the zoo it was not in an acceptable state. The pond, for example, was so thickly covered in moss that the manatees had to move down to the end of it, while the jaguar and puma were kept in cages and enclosures barely big enough to house them securely. The aquarium and the petting zoo had been closed down and the monkey exhibit too appeared to be closed. According to sources close to the zoo at the time it suffered from funding issues which made it hard to maintain a certain level of upkeep. As a consequence, we reported, it had not undergone major maintenance for quite a long time, and by extension the animals too were affected. Adding to the difficulties was the fact that there was a lack of zoo personnel. We asked whether the zoo could even afford to keep the few animals they still had.
The general preference in other countries is not so much to have zoos in the traditional sense, as wildlife parks affording the larger animals as well as those which are active over distances greater space. Even traditional zoos in many countries nowadays give their animals far more room so they are not too confined. Guyana’s zoo is really not very spacious and ideally should not be keeping large animals at all. We reported that perhaps it was coincidental that following this newspaper’s visit to the zoo, two notices appeared in the media for rehabilitation works there. One was for the renovation of the animal clinic and the other for the rehabilitation and extension of the jaguar enclosure.
In fairness to the Commission, the Guyana Zoo and Wildlife Rescue Centre no longer falls in the category of a traditional zoo. It does not, for example, acquire animals for display or captive breeding. Instead, the animals there have been rescued from abandonment or illegal or abusive conditions and are then accommodated for the purposes of rehabilitation and subsequent release. Those which cannot be released because they would not survive in the wild, are kept in the zoo. While this is a commendable approach, it still means that the animals which they do retain must be well fed and well kept. For a larger creature like a jaguar, they perhaps could look at the design of the zoo, to see how much more space could be created to house it.
Even if the zoo does not have a large variety of animals, it will still need sufficient staff to ensure their well-being. A shortage of keepers is a major problem from a welfare point of view, and would have to be addressed, otherwise the animals will always be poorly looked after. Funding is not just the answer to ensuring they receive adequate nutrition, but may also be the answer to attracting more staff. Volunteering is undoubtedly welcome, but that only helps with periodic interventions and specific exercises; it will not assist with the ongoing issues of caring for the animals. So will the government find more money for the zoo and Garden? After all, such funds would relieve some of the suffering of caged animals, and account for only a tiny fraction of what is spent on flashy highways.
In May last year after our visit the Commission announced that it was working assiduously to improve conditions at the zoo both for the animals housed there and for the patrons. It went on to explain that a project involving all the parks had started owing to conditions at the zoo which were constantly being brought to the attention of management. Ongoing work, it said, had already resulted in improvements in the walkways and enclosures in some sections of the zoo, and enhancing the aesthetics of the facility was taking place in a phased approach.
It now seems that enhancing the aesthetics of the place will be ongoing this year in the form of volunteer action. So far it has received enthusiastic support from NGOs, companies and individuals among whom were numbered members of the President’s Youth Award, the British High Commission, ExxonMobil, Schlumberger, the Caribbean Youth Environment Network and the Church of Latter Day Saints. Mr Fraser said that the project would go forward on a quarterly basis, on either Saturday or Sunday mornings.
Foreign Secretary and Commission Chairman Robert Persaud expressed his gratitude to all those who had responded to the initiative and said that this country was a model globally for the way in which our wildlife and forests were protected. He added that it was therefore important for a ‘subset’ of those larger spaces to follow suit. “So it is having functional green spaces, but also having these spaces and facilities to showcase and let people appreciate and understand what we are doing as a country and as a people in terms of managing our rich biodiversity,” he was quoted as saying.
It is unlikely that at the present time even the Botanic Garden is much of an advertisement for our biodiversity, although in earlier days it once was, but by definition the zoo is not. It is good to learn that volunteers will be rehabilitating the zoo in terms of its physical appearance, but will Mr Persaud now tell the public what animals the zoo holds, what their current condition is and how many keepers it employs? If the state of the inmates is not optimal, would he please say what the Commission intends to do about it?