Too illegal to do anything about…

It seems that ‘lousy excuses involving animals’ are all the rage these days. Such a shame it wasn’t like that when I tried convincing my teacher that ‘my dog had eaten my homework’ at school. 

Even I thought it was a lousy excuse at the time. I thought so, even though I also knew it was indeed what had happened. He really did eat my homework. And everything else in my schoolcase, too. And pretty much anything that was ever carelessly left within possible wolfing distance (including, once, my entire P.E. kit. I know this for a fact, because I had to clean up his droppings afterwards. One pile of crap had a Soldini logo…)

Not only is all this an incontrovertible fact; but to be honest, it would not even remotely surprise anyone who’s ever actually lived with a dog. Especially an untameable, unmanageable Labrador lookalike, whose only reaction to anything in its path was to try either eating, humping, or tunnelling right through it (in that order). 

Not unlike the way certain local developers behave when the environment gets in their way, now that I think about it… But let’s leave that for later.

All the same: I didn’t seriously expect to be believed. There’s something too obviously cliché about the excuse to actually work… which is kind of unfair, really. After all, dogs have been known to eat a lot stranger things than just copybooks, as the Internet will quickly confirm: cushions, entire sofas, Rubik cubes, chess sets, other dogs… 

It is certainly more plausible than being abducted by aliens, or having your home destroyed by a tornado, or any other of the equally lousy excuses I tried using (with much the same success) at the time. 

But such is life, I suppose. A lousy excuse remains lousy, even – or especially – if it happens to be true.

I suspect the Prime Minister must have felt the same way this week, when he tried justifying the authority’s failure to take action on an illegal zoo –which ultimately resulted in a three-year-child hospitalised with grievous injuries – by hinting that the fate of all the cute, cuddly animals it contains may hang in the balance.

“When we looked at the options that were available, one of them was to kill the animals,” he rather bluntly told the press this week. “We didn’t want to do that… we don’t want to kill animals, either in general or in cases like this. But the truth is that we were working on this before the accident happened…”

Followed by a commitment to ‘take the necessary action with regard to illegal zoos’: for which, he repeated throughout the brief interview, no regulations actually exist. Consultation is therefore under way to draw up legislation, etc. etc.

Right. It’s a pity Dr Muscat didn’t actually specify what other options were considered. I do hope, however, they were built of slightly sterner logic than the one he actually mentioned.

The problem with enforcing planning laws on illegal zoos, he seems to be telling us, is that his government would have suddenly had a bunch of zoo animals on its hands. And as there are no known regulations on the subject of what to with a bunch of zoo animals… we would, naturally, have to kill them all. 

Ah yes, of course. Because the only conceivable thing to do with an animal that suddenly falls under your care is… to immediately kill it, right? No other option springs to mind: it’s always: animal = problem, only solution = kill animal. 

But in any case: this, he assures us, is not an option for his government. Which of course leaves only one other option available for the time being: and that is to allow the zoo to carry on operating illegally, until regulations are drawn up.

End of argument

OK, like I said earlier: the dog excuse was lousy. But at least, the logic underpinning it was sound. ‘Dog ate my homework; therefore, I have no homework to produce at school’. Works like a charm, at least on that level alone.

This one? Doesn’t even get off the ground, I’m afraid. For starters: the premise itself is entirely flawed, long before we even get to the part about ‘killing animals’. 

Hate to point it out, but Malta does have regulations regarding zoos: specifically, Legal Notice 265 of 2003 – CAP 439. (The title kind of gives it away, too: it’s called ‘The Keeping of Wild Animals in Zoos Regulations, 2003’.) 

The objectives of these regulations, we are told, are to protect wild fauna and to conserve biodiversity by providing for the adoption of licensing and inspection of zoos on the territory of Malta, in order to strengthen the role of zoos in the conservation of biodiversity, etc.

Hence the problem. It’s not that no regulations exist; it’s that the ones that do were disregarded. Not only is there no licence to house tigers, lions, monkeys, gazelles and whatnot… but much of the development itself is not covered by any MEPA planning permit at all. As has been quoted all over the press (worth repeating, because the implications are quite scandalous) Montekristo Estate was described by MEPA’s own chairman as ‘Malta’s largest illegal development’.

Muscat cannot seriously expect to be believed, therefore, when he argues that its very illegality makes it impossible to enforce the law. That’s like saying that… um… a bank might be ‘too big to fail’…

Already, then, it looks more like an admission of defeat. Much worse beside, it also flies in the face of all the other illegal developments which have borne the full brunt of the law: the same law that proved ‘impossible’ to enforce in this case, without committing a conservation massacre. 

A good example of this occurred just this week: policemen were assaulted while carrying out an enforcement order on (what seems to be) an illegal scrapyard in Zejtun. One of them was even threatened with a gun, which later turned out to be a toy.

Naturally, the reaction was excessive, and very unfair on the policemen concerned – not to mention rather unwise on the assailant’s part. Pulling a toy gun on a policeman would seriously dent your life expectancy chances in most other countries… in the US, for instance, you’d be dead before even reaching the toy shop. 

But then, just look at the two cases side by side: a Zejtun backyard used to dump bulky refuse; and a giant, sprawling, unlicensed zoo, illegally housing scores of protected, sometimes endangered animals. One clamped down on by the authorities like a tonne of bricks; the other, open for business for years. 

It cannot be that the same basic issue – lack of valid permit – could produce two so totally contrasting outcomes. It might not justify the violence, but the aggravation can be felt by everyone who has experienced similar issues before. 

There is, after all, one animal Joseph Muscat has so far left out of his calculations: human beings. And there is only so much blatant injustice and double standards a human being can actually take, before finally reaching for that toy gun in his holster…

To be honest, though, it is the rest of the argument that bothers me. Muscat acknowledges that closing down the zoo would saddle his government with responsibility for its caged occupants. So far, so good. And I welcome the fact that he has categorically ruled out simply slaughtering them all.

But at the same time… how the heck was that even looked at as a possible option to take? Not only is the very concept outrageous by any standard – I shudder to even think about the collective howl of outrage among Animal Rights Groups worldwide – but it would be also a crime by international law. 

Malta has not only an Animal Welfare Act, and the abovementioned zoo regulations which commit governments to ‘protect wild fauna’… we are also signatory to various international treaties – eg, the United Nations’ CITES – which specifically prohibit the killing of endangered species under any circumstances. 

Over 60 species among Montekristo’s collection (such as the one that precipitated this entire discussion: the tiger) qualify for legal protection under the CITES convention. Like I said, I’m relieved that Muscat shot down the slaughter option so quickly. But it should never have been even remotely considered in the first place.

Another reason is that it would be nothing more or less than a gross dereliction of responsibility. Just imagine the same logic applied to another illegal scenario. ‘We can’t clamp down on an unlicensed orphanage offering children up for adoption… because otherwise, we’d have to assume responsibility for the abandoned children’. 

OK, I won’t even bother suggesting the option that was considered (however fleetingly) for the zoo animals. But honestly: what kind of a lousy excuse is that, to allow the illegal orphanage to carry on operating ‘for lack of any other alternative’?

In all such cases there are alternatives. Muscat himself represents the alternative in the illegal zoo scenario. It is, in fact, to assume this sort of responsibility that we elect governments. We even give them a percentage of our earnings, to get the job done. If he really does intend to ‘take all the necessary action’, one possible option he will have to consider is to expropriate the illegal zoo, take over its management, and keep it closed until the animals can be housed elsewhere

His government is legally entitled to expropriate: either forcibly, on the basis of the illegality of premises; or ‘in the national interest’, after paying compensation. I’ll leave you to decide which would be more appropriate. Both they are valid options, and there may be others too.

It is the second part, however, that might prove difficult, and will definitely take a good long while. There are over 60 species represented in that illegal collection, all of which would have to be accommodated in another zoo somewhere. 

That’s an awful lot of lions, tigers, monkeys and gazelles to suddenly turn upon the world’s doorstep with, you know… carrying a sign saying ‘Up For Adoption, Don’t All Speak at Once…’ 

But this only reinforces my earlier point about lousy excuses being all the more lousy for being true.

On one point, Muscat is perfectly right: the problem is now too big to be solved by merely clamping down on the development. The question he should be asking now, is not ‘what to do with the mess this situation has left behind’… but ‘how did this mess get so totally out of hand to begin with’?

The answer takes us back full circle: ‘We cannot do anything about this illegality, because the illegality is too illegal to do anything about’…