Last Thursday the Planning Authority sanctioned a large zoo of sorts in Siġġiewi. The place had no permits to speak of and was effectively illegal. The sanctioning went against the advice – and vote – of the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA).
The zoo squats on what used to be agricultural land and the PA’s decision was criticised by environmentalists as a textbook case of ‘build now, sanction later’.
I wish I could say I’m surprised at the PA’s brazen obstinacy. As is, I won’t waste column space discussing the implications of such large-scale sanctioning. (We’re talking about three acres of land here, not a bathroom window misplaced by 20cm.) Nor will I go into the wisdom and ethics of keeping large, complex and intelligent animals like tigers and monkeys in tiny confined spaces. Keepers will swear the animals are the happiest in the world, and I’m equally happy to take their roar for it.
There is, however, one thing about the matter that tells of shocking ignorance by people who ought to know better. Following what must have been an extended bout of horse-trading, the PA agreed to lift a planning-gain payment of €50,000. It was replaced by an arrangement in which the owner of the zoo will host free school visits organised by the Education Department.
My jaw dropped so low when I read this that I probably qualified for free lodging at the zoo primate house. For two reasons. First, the bright minds at the Education Department who agreed to this are obviously ignorant of the fact that collections of exotic animals are not so much about animals as about the power of the collector. Second, menageries of this kind are a slap in the face for the Education Department’s own curriculum.
A few months ago I picked up a volume at a second-hand bookshop called Oudry’s Painted Menagerie. Jean-Baptiste Oudry was a French painter of hunts, animals, still lifes and landscapes. Between 1739 and 1752, he painted a celebrated suite of life-size portraits of exotic animals from the royal menagerie at Versailles. In discussing these portraits, the authors of the book talk about exotic animal collections as mirrors of their times.
Finding historical materials was not an issue. It turns out that the recorded history of the keeping and display of exotics goes back 3,500 years to Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt. It appears she liked nothing better than to display her power and influence over faraway places through a collection of live trophies. Her habit was shared many centuries later by Ptolemy Philadelphus, and later by the Romans (who tended to combine keeping with bouts of carnage in the arena).
Exotic animal collections undo everything that children learn in environmental studies
The story gets more elaborate as we move into Renaissance and early modern Europe, when all manner of princes fell over each other in their obsession with exotic animal collections. Pope Leo X was so tickled by the royal gift of an elephant called Hanno that he had the animal join him in procession through the streets of Rome. Louis XIV’s menagerie at Versailles became a symbol of the astonishing pomp and power of the French monarchy. And so on to the latest high-end instalment by the royals and mega-rich of the Gulf states.
The examples are innumerable and apparently disparate. There is, however, a common thread which runs through thousands of years and miles of history and geography. Throughout, the keeping and display of exotic animals was and is all about the power of the collector. Put simply, a canary is one thing, a bunch of tigers that hack through stacks of meat every day quite another.
It’s clear the Education Department needs some spoonfeeding here. School visits to menageries like the one in Siġġiewi do not educate children about animals. Rather, and in a tacit and insidious way, they parade before children and their minders the power, wealth and influence of the men (like tiger penis soup, this is largely male territory) who own them.
There is absolutely nothing therapeutic about L-Arka ta’ Noe Therapeutic Zoo. Or rather there is, if the psychological needs of the owner are taken into account. The mad thing is that children will be encouraged to look up to those needs.
There’s another thing. One subject area that has made huge strides in recent years is that of environmental studies. I happen to know two people who are directly involved in it. One is a university professor and the other a secondary schoolteacher. Both are passionate about what they do, and both tell me that the key tenet of environmental studies is that humans, animals and the environment belong to the same space.
That space is called ecology. In environmental studies, children are taught to understand nature and animals generally as part of a much broader context. Readers will forgive me the use of a cliché: the word’s ‘holistic’.
Collections of exotics are the exact opposite of that. By definition, they remove animals from their context – and the more removed, the better – and display them in surroundings that are entirely alien. Exotic animal collections undo everything that children learn in environmental studies.
The Education Department may as well hand out free cigarettes as part of the public health curriculum. Actually, cigars would be even better. Their image dovetails very nicely with that of rich and powerful men who muscle tigers for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
mafalzon@hotmail.com