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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Lessons from Kangaroo Jack

by

283 days ago
20240925
Wesley Gibbings

Wesley Gibbings

Let me con­fess that dur­ing the pan­dem­ic lock­down, reg­u­lar Face­book posts from a zo­o­log­i­cal of­fi­cer of the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo helped me (and I am sure thou­sands more) main­tain a rel­a­tive­ly high lev­el of emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty.

I am not go­ing to call the young of­fi­cer’s name (which you may al­ready know), since it would be un­fair to drag her fur­ther in­to a dis­cus­sion on the lat­est, ab­surd in­stance in which our well-doc­u­ment­ed “cul­ture of se­cre­cy” has been on stark pub­lic dis­play.

The fact is that dur­ing the pan­dem­ic lock­down, the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo de­cid­ed to open its gates vir­tu­al­ly to us through a se­ries of de­light­ful so­cial me­dia dis­patch­es ex­hibit­ing a high lev­el of at­ten­tion, com­pas­sion, and rap­port be­tween a com­pe­tent zookeep­er and the an­i­mals in her care.

Then, some­time lat­er, came Jack the kan­ga­roo, pub­lic spec­u­la­tion sur­round­ing his health through me­dia re­port­ing and, lat­ter­ly, the dili­gent work of News­day re­porter, Naris­sa Fras­er.

Here, un­like so many oth­er news sto­ries with grand rev­e­la­tions, we aren’t deal­ing with de­vel­op­ments that emerged from the dark, sin­is­ter shad­ows of se­cret un­der­world trans­ac­tions. Con­cern was al­ready in the pub­lic do­main, and with­out vis­i­ble ob­jec­tion from any­one, that some­thing was wrong with Kan­ga­roo Jack.

Back in March, the Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter even launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­di­tion of the an­i­mal.

If any­thing, the on­go­ing pub­lic saga of Kan­ga­roo Jack of­fered us an in­sight in­to our hu­mane in­stincts as peo­ple – what­ev­er the jus­ti­fi­able am­biva­lence over zoos.

This was no or­di­nary zoo sto­ry. For ex­am­ple, I can­not say that too many vis­i­tors can name any of the four oth­er kan­ga­roos at the zoo that reached there about three years be­fore Jack.

Maybe, maybe not. But I re­mem­ber vis­it­ing with young Reign from Guyana in 2022, and we ex­per­i­ment­ed with make­up names for all the an­i­mals.

I al­so don’t think it should be in­cum­bent on any zoo to is­sue death an­nounce­ments up­on the pass­ing of any snake, mon­key, man­i­cou, or tur­tle (though it has hap­pened in the past!). But then there was Jack – the sub­ject of cu­ri­ous so­cial and main­stream me­dia at­ten­tion.

Sure, there are per­haps more im­por­tant things to gripe about, but I think this case points us in the di­rec­tion of an over­all malaise that plagues our coun­try, and for cer­tain, the rest of our re­gion. This isn’t just about a kan­ga­roo.

So per­sis­tent has been the ready re­sort to se­cre­cy in of­fi­cial cir­cles, that some of us in the field of jour­nal­ism have fixed ac­tivist eyes on the re­quire­ments of freer ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion held in trust by pub­lic agen­cies.

To lo­cate the role of the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety in all this, we may choose to look at the 2018 judg­ment of Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, in which it is con­clud­ed that “the ZSTT (Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety) is a pub­lic body with­in the mean­ing of the (Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion) Act ...”

The zoo is owned, op­er­at­ed, and man­aged by the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of T&T (ZSTT) – in­cor­po­rat­ed by statute in 1952 and re­portable to the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. A lit­tle over $5 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to ZSTT for 2024 by the state via the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land, and Fish­eries.

The ZSTT is al­so un­der the purview of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion and its an­nu­al ad­min­is­tra­tive re­ports are re­quired to be tabled in par­lia­ment.

It thus ap­pears that in many re­spects, the so­ci­ety has trans­paren­cy oblig­a­tions un­der the law. At the very least, there is gen­er­al pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty even when, let’s say, the con­di­tion of an an­i­mal has cap­tured our imag­i­na­tions.

There are, of course, pro­ce­dur­al is­sues as­so­ci­at­ed with the FOI Act that can ex­tend be­yond mere ques­tion­ing by an en­ter­pris­ing re­porter on the health sta­tus of an an­i­mal.

But should we re­al­ly have to go this far? A re­porter asked a sim­ple ques­tion: What­ev­er hap­pened to Kan­ga­roo Jack? Phone calls re­mained unan­swered. Peo­ple could not be lo­cat­ed.

It is ap­palling that the so­ci­ety should have dis­closed what ap­pear to be straight­for­ward, ap­par­ent­ly non-con­tro­ver­sial med­ical facts about the demise of Kan­ga­roo Jack on­ly af­ter be­ing pressed to do so by an en­ter­pris­ing re­porter and in the face of ac­com­pa­ny­ing pub­lic con­cern.

It is sad that so many of us are shrug­ging this off as an­oth­er mere ex­am­ple of our “cul­ture of se­cre­cy” - not­ed by re­searchers on a Me­dia In­sti­tute of the Caribbean (MIC) study as be­ing per­va­sive through­out our re­gion.

Un­til we ag­gres­sive­ly ad­dress this through all avail­able means, in­clud­ing em­ploy­ment of en­light­ened po­lit­i­cal will, Kan­ga­roo Jack can eas­i­ly be­come Cit­i­zen Jill.


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