Profile: Jeremy Mallinson
Running a zoo and fighting animal smugglers and politicians
The man in day to day charge I of Jersey Zoo has responsibilities which stretch much further, thanks to the growing influence of a small island on conservation efforts throughout the world.
Jeremy Mallinson has been on the staff of the zoo since two months after it opened and has been its director for the past 14 years. But not only does he have overall responsibility for one of the most admired animal collections in the world, but he is also very much involved in co-ordinating captive breeding programmes at a large number of widely separated establishments.
In between time he has to find time to write books, scientific papers, fulfil television and radio engagements and fight a continuing battle against animal smugglers, such as the Dutch dealer who illegally holds a tenth of the entire world population of golden-headed lion tamarins.
After spending some two and a half years in the regular army of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Jeremy Mallinson returned to his Jersey home just before the opening of Gerald Durrell’s new zoo in 1959.
It was his intention to return to Africa but he had been given a copy of Gerald Durre|l’s book ‘My family and other animals’ as a Christmas present and been told that he was just the sort of person he should work for.
From his most formative years Jeremy has been enthusiastic about the animal kingdom and the only reason for going to Africa in the first place was to see as much of its wildlife as possible.
Although he had not previously expressed much interest in the work of zoos, he had not at that time appreciated the tremendous work they could do for animal conservation.
However, after reading a number of articles about the reason for Gerald Durrell establishing his zoological collection in Jersey, he decided to write to the Zoo superintendent, Kenneth Smith, to see whether there was any possibility of having a summer job during the zoo’s first season in 1959. On May 1, 1959 he joined the bird staff and by October 1961 he had gained as much practical experience as possible working with both birds and mammals.
In the summer of 1962 he was put in charge of the mammal section and during the following winter, anxious to study as many animals as possible in their natural habitat, he planned an 18-month trip which would have taken him back to Africa, where he planned to undertake a further animal collection, and then on to South America.
Although plans for this project were well advanced, Gerald Durrell offered him the appointment of deputy director from May 1963 and the trip was cancelled.
During the winter of 1965 he took four months leave of absence to investigate the legendary Mitla in the northern part of Bolivia and during this expedition he spent several weeks travelling on some of the lesser known tributaries of the upper Amazon basin.
He returned to Jersey from Guyana bringing back with him a number of animals from that country. Since that time he has had the opportunity to travel quite widely, carrying out study and animal collecting expeditions in Madagascar, Assam and Zaire.
As zoo director, his working day always starts with an hour walking round the entire collection, visiting all sections and talking to the staff. He is a great believer in leading by example and believes that fortnightly senior staff meetings, which help to keep everybody in touch with policy and overcome problems, have built up an excellent team spirit and a remarkably good atmosphere.
“I attach a great deal of importance to my first hour. lt is the only way I can keep my finger on the pulse of things.”
Not only that, it is his only contact with the animals with which he was so closely involved in the early days of the zoo, many of them close friends.
“N'Pongo still makes a lovely rumbling noise and I make a rumbling noise back to her. I can also go into the kitchen where the gorilla food is prepared and put my arms through the bars to touch the gorillas which were hand-reared.”
Jeremy believes that it was very important to have had a background of working in just about every part of the zoo and knowing what it was like to start at 7 o'clock with cleaning out the cages.
“I have had the practical side which I believe is very important and gives me a much greater understanding as to some of the problems which can arise.”
There are now 18 staff looking after the animals out of a total staff of 43, compared with six or seven, a maintenance man and one person in the paybox when he started.
In those early years he worked a 6 1/2 day week, taking one afternoon off to play hockey. Although by 1962 the staff were actually getting two afternoons off, it was not until the mid-60s that they were getting a full day off, aside from annual leave. Jeremy still works a 5‘/2 day week, using Saturday mornings to produce the trust's important publication the Dodo Journal with Kate Taynton.
He describes his job as ”diverse in every possible way” because there is not only the zoo work and the constant contact with people from all over the world on the telephone, but the responsibility of representing the trust on so many outside bodies.
“I do a lot of work to help them progress in the way we consider is important for the animal kingdom. Then there are the rescue missions, not directly connected with the work of the trust but just as important to the overall conservation effort.”
For several months this year he has been fighting to release the tamarins held illegally in Holland by a dealer who clearly does not share the Jersey Trust's views on conservation. It is battles like this which draw attention to the fight Jeremy and his colleagues have to wage not only with unscrupulous dealers but with disinterested governments and authorities.
“A few commando raids would help, but we cannot do that. We have to co-ordinate a whole lot of people who you would hope would think in the same way that we do, but all have a different way of reaching the same goal. We have to get people to get their act together. It is frustrating that some people are so swamped by bureaucracy that they cannot make decisions and if they do they come too late.”
“When an animal dealer has 20 per cent of the world population of a species illegally and they are steadily dying because nobody can do anything about it, to my mind that is catastrophic in every way.”
When in Assam in 1976 trying to save the pigmy hog from extinction he found that 95 per cent of his time was spent coping with politics.
“One has to get people to believe that one is there to help. There are a lot of awfully suspicious people because of the way they have been treated in the past by others. But people throughout the world are more and more coming to recognise the integrity of the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust.”
“We are small but we command a tremendous amount of international respect. We have got the best collection of animals in the world for our size and not only are we carrying out breeding programmes here, but we are doing so much field work in certain areas.”
“Our people in charge of sections have published papers about breeding programmes and done work with the same species in the wild state. We are increasingly keeping our finger on the pulse of things so that we can provide a well- balanced opinion of what should happen for long-term conservation strategies to conservation bodies and to the governments concerned.”
“It is far better for us to see a few jobs really well done than to do a little bit here and a little bit there. We concentrate our efforts in certain areas where we can visit, do field work and make our recommendations and become an integral part of the long-term effort. Jersey Zoo comes out of it as a model of what can be achieved.”
“We can lead by example and exert a lot of moral pressure on a lot of zoos and conservation organisations to follow our example. A lot of other zoo directors have got blinkers on but l think we are exerting a lot of influence on people.”
This is all port of what Jeremy Mallinson sees as a threefold purpose for Jersey Zoo.
The first is to collect and breed animals, and the second is to influence other people to do the same, but it is the third influence on the public at large which he considers to be vitally important.
“Gerald Durrell has given more people an awareness of the importance of the animal kingdom than any other person through his publications. It is so important to get over to people the significance of conservation. No matter how good films and articles are there is no substitute for seeing the living animal. When I see Jambo out I can only feel humble and it is very good for humans to feel humble.”
“I consider that zoos play a very important part in giving people an awareness of the importance of animals.”
“I recognise that the majority of people initially come for an experience and to enjoy themselves and quite rightly so, but we hope they take away a greater understanding of the importance of conservation.”
“In the final analysis, unless we can do that we are wasting our time.”
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