Return of the Galliwasp

Mike G. Rutherford, Curator of Zoology and Anatomy at The Hunterian, has been a curator for 20 years and at the Hunterian for the last three years. He started his career at the Kelvingrove Museum before moving to Trinidad & Tobago to be Zoology Curator for The University of the West Indies for 10 years.

Dr. Giovanna Vitelli is Head of Curatorial and Research at The Hunterian. Dr. Vitelli is an anthropologist and archaeologist of Indigenous/settler landscapes.

In April 2024, a group of curators from Jamaica collected a specimen of an extinct lizard indigenous to the island, a Jamaican giant galliwasp (Celestus occiduus), from The Hunterian, University of Glasgow and transported it home.   

The Jamaican giant galliwasp was last confirmed alive in the mid-1800s, and the species is now considered to be extinct. Before this return, there were no specimens of this largest species of galliwasp known to exist in Jamaica itself. Their extinction was caused by the destruction of the lizard’s natural habitat by European settlers and enslavers who committed genocide against the indigenous Taíno populations of the island and from the early 16th century onwards trafficked West African people into slavery. European enslavers and their descendants (at least 50% of them Scots) forced captive African people and their descendants into death camps working sugar cane plantations on the island, claiming the lives of innumerable people. The sugar cane plantation economy also introduced predators such as rats and mongooses to the island, which are believed to have contributed to the lizard’s extinction.    

Before the galliwasp became extinct, collectors caught and sent various galliwasp specimens to museums in Europe and the USA. Some specimens were held in a museum in Jamaica but are thought to have been lost during the 1907 Kingston earthquake. The lizard which was held by The Hunterian is a mature adult female and in good condition for a wet preserved specimen that is potentially over 170 years old. It became part of the University of Glasgow collections in 1888, the only surviving details being the species’ name and region of origin on the label of the original jar.

Mike Rutherford, Curator of Zoology and Anatomy,  proposed the repatriation to Jamaica after the inclusion of the galliwasp in an installation that was part of the 2022 Curating Discomfort project, an extensive museum intervention where Hunterian curators worked co-productively with a group of community curators to showcase objects with colonial significance. Community curator Dr Churnjeet Mahn selected the lizard for display and wrote the label describing the reasons for its extinction.  

In mid-2022, Mike started to explore the possibility of returning the galliwasp specimen. Initial contact was made with The University of the West Indies (UWI) in Jamaica, referencing the 2019 Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Glasgow. A project team was established, including Dr Shani Roper, curator of the UWI Museum, Elizabeth Morrison and Dionne Newell, curators from the Natural History Museum of Jamaica (NHMJ), a division of the Institute of Jamaica, and staff members from the UWI Department of Life Sciences including lecturer Dr Tannice Hall. The Jamaican team was invited to Glasgow for a week’s visit, to spend time with museum colleagues both at The Hunterian and National Museums Scotland.   

The first contact with Dr Roper from the UWI Museum in Kingston, was made in August 2022 and the final handover in Glasgow took place in April 2024. In between these dates, the time was taken up by many online discussions which allowed the project to evolve from a simple return of a specimen into a genuine programme of extended knowledge exchange, scientific enquiry and future collaborations.

In the intervening period, to promote the project, an online symposium was organised for June 2023 titled Repatriation, Natural History Collections and Knowledge Co-Production: The Case of the Giant Jamaican Galliwasp, hosted by UWI, with two speakers from Jamaica and two from the UK. Arranging the logistics, team visas, travel and visa funding was subject to long lead times.

In addition, in the same week that the visit took place, The University of Glasgow hosted an international conference on repatriation, From Scotland to the World, initiated and co-organised by Glasgow’s CREATe (Centre for Regulation of the Creative Economy) and The Hunterian, along with The Institute of Art and Law. At this conference one of the highlighted case studies was of the Galliwasp, co-presented in a full team session led by Dr Shani Roper and Mike Rutherford.   

The biggest expense was for the team visit from Jamaica. Shani, Elizabeth, Dionne and Tannice, along with Desireina Delancy, a postgraduate student, required funding for flights, accommodation and daily costs, which amounted to just under £10,000. The aim was not just to facilitate a return but to forge mutually desired connections between the two groups for future scientific research and community work. 

To cover the staff costs, funding was provided by the University of Glasgow through the International Partnership Development Fund (IPDF), the Glasgow-Caribbean Centre for Development Research (GCCDR) and The Hunterian itself.   

The cost for the postgraduate student was covered by The University of the West Indies.

There was a conscious decision on both sides to keep the repatriation process flexible and to have our Jamaican colleagues determine the pace and direction of the process.   

The main formal process was the deaccessioning of the specimen from Hunterian collections. This was guided by The Hunterian’s Repatriation Policy and involved presenting a short report stating the case for the repatriation for approval by the Hunterian Leadership Team and then to the Hunterian Strategic Development Board for ratification.   

Besides obtaining their own travel visas, our Jamaican colleagues were responsible for obtaining import permits, submitting a form to The Natural Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA) who oversee The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) regulations for the country.   

To make sure that the specimen could be exported, CITES regulations were examined, but as the species was not listed there were no barriers to it leaving the country. To be prudent we contacted the UK CITES Management Authority and they gave the all-clear.

In committing to the fully programmed visit and collaborative research around the return of the lizard, we had to raise significant funding. Initial enquiries were made to external bodies both in the UK and the Caribbean but in the end, there was a commitment from within the University of Glasgow to support this in reference to its 2019 Memorandum of Understanding with The University of the West Indies.

The whole project was very much allowed to develop according to the needs and desires of our Jamaican partners for a fully contextualised repatriation, starting simple and letting it grow into both a scientific and local community-oriented project. We now accept that each repatriation and return has its own dynamics and requirements, even if the underlying principles of respect and understanding remain the same. Although repatriation events have usually focused on cultural objects and human remains, we recognise that any museum object should be considered in respect to being returned to its place of origin.   

The reasons for a Natural History return are connected to loss and cultural identity in particular ways: in this case the lizard was an extinct species so could not be collected again; it is endemic to Jamaica and therefore part of its history; there are no known specimens in Jamaica to tell that history; and that desire to re-tell the story and to study the lizard in that context was desired by the community.