PHILIP NOLAN

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IT CAME as no surprise that within hours of launching a fundraising campaign to ensure its very survival, Dublin Zoo saw more than €1million in public donations pour into its coffers yesterday. It’s not hard to see why, because many of us, especially native Dubliners, have an emotional connection with the zoo (or the ‘ah-zoo’, as we inexplicably called it!). It’s where we went on school or scouts outings, on Communion and Confirmation days, on our birthdays, or even just because it was a nice day.

My father often played football in the Phoenix Park on Sundays, and we would make him drive past the zoo perimeter in the hope we might actually see an animal.

Everything about the zoo was exotic. Yes, we saw animals on television, but nothing was as good as seeing them up close. Children by nature enjoy the scatological, and we laughed, and winced, when we saw a chimpanzee do something unmentionable with its own waste.

We even loved the petting area because, as urban children, we actually didn’t see many animals at all, other than cats and dogs and the odd horse pulling a cart on the street.

If we felt like that in the Sixties and Seventies, though, you can only imagine the wonder felt by generations that did not have television. When the zoo opened in 1840, it had 46 mammals and 72 birds donated by London Zoo, and opened to the public on Sundays for a penny admission. What did those early visitors make of it all, when the only animals they ever would have known about were domestic pets or livestock?

Disquiet

On childhood trips, my own favourite time of day was when they fed the sealions, and my least favourite thing about the zoo was the reptile house. Even at this stage of my life, I still can’t abide snakes and I guess that’s where it all started.

Looking back, though, all was not great with Dublin Zoo. Many of the animals were caged, and that concerned me, even as a child. My disquiet was amplified when I saw zoos worse than Dublin’s. Indeed, on one visit to Skansen in Stockholm in 2006, I nearly wept looking at bears in a pen that was too small for them, leaving them walking around in aimless circles. It was tragic.

Over the years, though, Dublin Zoo reinvented itself, moving the animals to themed areas such as the African Plains that opened in 2001, the Asian Forests, Fringes Of The Arctic and Chimpanzee Island, giving them much more space. You could argue it’s still not ideal, but since most of the animals have been born in captivity and never had to learn predatory skills in order to eat, there would seem to be little merit in sending them to a natural environment that, ironically, would be alien to them.

And, of course, zoos now are about so much more than places where children can point and laugh and squeal with excitement. Dublin Zoo plays a massive role i n conservation of threatened species, something I have been forcibly struck by watching The Zoo on RTÉ One on Sunday nights. It is quite clear that everyone working there has nothing but the best i nterests of every animal at heart. Over the last few weeks, we have seen them operated on, or shipped to other zoos in Europe for breeding purposes. The level of care is extraordinary; we saw southern white rhino calf Zuko painstakingly prepared not to react violently when injected with a sedative before beginning his journey to join a new herd.

The remit extends far beyond the Phoenix Park too, as we also have followed keeper Brendan Walsh as he travels around Tunisia, where Dublin Zoo supports a programme for the conservation of the scimitar-horned oryx.

Far from being just a place of entertainment, the modern zoo has a story to tell, and children can see at first hand the need for conservation and for protecting natural habitats. It is ironic that a pandemic has closed the zoo for now, because it is precisely this disrespect for natural habitats that has seen animal viruses leap into humans. China has bulldozed vast swathes of former wilderness to build the factories that pump its goods across the world, and the houses for those who work in them, and it is far from alone in this. Everywhere, from Asia, to Africa, to Europe and the Americas, even to the Arctic, habitats are under threat.

Funding

When the balance of Nature is flipped, there is an inevitability that Sars, Ebola, Mers and Covid will be the result, and an equal inevitability that globalisation and its attendant mass intercontinental travel will spread these zoonotic diseases across the globe within weeks. That’s why I’m glad the public has donated so much, and that the Taoiseach moved swiftly yesterday to assure Dublin Zoo it would get the funding it needs.

I can park my disquiet about captivity if it means children can see these animals and learn about them without having to travel unnecessarily to do so. I can assuage any latent guilt by reminding myself that the more they learn about tigers, gorillas and other threatened species, the more they will hopefully feel passionate about assuring their survival in the wild.

I live close to Seal Rescue Ireland in Courtown, Co. Wexford, and whenever friends visit with children, I take them there to show them how important it is that wounded animals are nursed back to health before being returned to the sea. Seals are plentiful, though, and that is not the case with many of the creatures in Dublin Zoo. The 1.3 million who visit it every year are, hopefully, reminded of the fragility of the animals’ lives – and, now, about the fragility of our own.

We have to find a way to live more harmoniously with animals, and not destroy their worlds in order to expand our own. Education and conservation are the best way forward to make meaningful change, and with its worldwide reputations for expert care, Dublin Zoo simply must survive for many more generations to come.