Zoological Society of London Celebrates 200 Years of Conservation and Influence

What does the Zoological Society of London do? After 200 years, the answer is still ‘everything’ | Martin Rowson

The ZSL has given us the word ‘zoo’, inspired artists and birthed a quarter of all Sumatran tigers. It has fascinated me since childhood – and the world since 1826 In the spring of 1826, two extraordinary things occurred 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 killed by a firing squad in the cramped enclosure where he’d been kept for the previous six years. By this point Chunee...

By Martin Rowson