In the spring of 1826, two extraordinary events unfolded in central London. The first was the death of Chunee the elephant. On 1 March at Cross's Menagerie, upstairs in the Exeter 'Change on the Strand, Chunee was executed by a firing squad in the cramped enclosure where he had been confined for six years. By then, Chunee stood over three metres tall and weighed at least five tonnes. Like all adult male elephants, he periodically entered musth, a state of heightened testosterone that made him aggressive and uncontrollable. After injuring one keeper and accidentally killing another, the proprietor, Edward Cross, ordered his destruction. Soldiers from nearby Somerset House fired 152 musket balls into the elephant. Wounded, he was reportedly finished off with a harpoon. The following day, the public paid a shilling to watch his body being butchered by students from the Royal College of Surgeons.
Then came the second extraordinary event. On 29 April 1826, galvanised by public outrage over Chunee's fate, and after years of discussions among scientists and politicians about the need for an organisation to promote the scientific study and display of animals, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) was founded.
A Legacy of Conservation and Culture
To celebrate its 200th birthday, ZSL is building on its founding principles by announcing a new £20m wildlife health centre at London Zoo. The centre will allow public access to ZSL's vets at work and enhance ZSL's leading role in wildlife conservation. This is already the primary focus of its Institute of Zoology, its two zoos in London and Whipsnade (which attracted 2.2 million visitors last year), and the 2,764 conservation projects it has operated in over 80 countries worldwide.
I know this because I served as a ZSL trustee for 30 years, though my connection began much earlier. I joined the XYZ (Exceptional Young Zoologist) club at age seven, inspired by Desmond Morris's Zoo Time. At 18, I became an associate member, and ten years later, I was elected a fellow. My small role in a successful insurrection by ZSL's members against the 1991 decision to close London Zoo led to my promotion to the ZSL council. That crisis, one of several in ZSL's history, was triggered by the huge backlog maintenance bill for 13 iconic listed buildings at Regent's Park.
The zoo did not close, and we sought to reinvigorate ZSL by refocusing on conservation biology, understanding the interconnection between animals, people, and ecosystems. We wanted ZSL to lead the worldwide struggle for wildlife conservation, as its founders intended.
What Does ZSL Do? Everything
When asked what ZSL does, I always answer: everything. Primarily, it is about all life on Earth. But it is also about us, how and why we stare into their faces and pretend it is not a mirror. It encompasses the history of London, enshrined in ZSL's name. In 1831, William IV transferred the royal menagerie from the Tower of London to London Zoo. When the lion terraces were redeveloped in the mid-2010s, it was said to be the first time no lions lived in London since King John's reign. By ZSL's calculations, about 5% of the wild population of Asiatic lions have been born on the site since 1991.
ZSL has permeated wider culture, coining the word zoo. My favourite fantasy quiz question connects Dracula to Withnail and I in one move: the old wolf enclosure in London Zoo's south-east corner appears in both book and movie. ZSL has inspired artists from Edwin Landseer to Elisabeth Frink, and writers from AA Milne and JK Rowling to Evelyn Waugh and Beatrix Potter. It brings together architectural styles from Decimus Burton's Georgian neoclassicism to Berthold Lubetkin's modernism to Hugh Casson's brutalism. It has commissioned poets from Louis MacNeice, who wrote a surreal zoo guide in 1938, to current poet laureate Simon Armitage, who published a 200th birthday poem, The Moon and the Zoo.
Connecting Humans to Animals
Most importantly, ZSL connects humans, more than half of us urban dwellers, back to other animals. Although I sympathise with arguments against animal captivity, I have seen all surviving representatives of an entire snail species saved from extinction in a plastic container in ZSL's care. That species has been reintroduced into the wild, one of ZSL's many successes in countering human rapacity. Our world is beset by cheap politicians seeking to divide people, whereas we urgently need to connect with every living thing, including each other. In hundreds of thousands of ways, that is what ZSL has done for 200 years.
After London Zoo's new Tiger Territory opened in 2013, an education officer told me she overheard a year 3 pupil say to their teacher, looking up from the glass separating them from a Sumatran tiger: But miss! You never told us they were real! For the record, a quarter of the global population of Sumatran tigers has been born as part of a global breeding programme managed by ZSL. Keeping it real.
