In my last column, I made mention of the National Wildlife Policy. The goals of this policy are: "The sustainable management of the wildlife resources, which provides for the social, economic, ecological, cultural and spiritual needs of present and future generations; wildlife management that contributes to the sustainable development of the country, enhances the quality of human life, while at the same time protecting ecological processes."
Many citizens agree that the current policy draft does not completely address issues relating to wildlife and resource management; we will look at a few recommendations towards achieving this goal.
Animal research is becoming more "abstractified"–instead of people going out into the field to study real animals in their natural habitats, researchers tend to use statistical software to construct models which are then studied. This is due to the development of new mathematical tools but it is important to remember that mathematical models and statistics have their limits. What may look good on paper often creates chaos in reality.
Fieldwork helps scientists to ask the right questions. High-quality fieldwork is observational science, meaning that research on animal behaviour and ecosystems should start with observation. Without fieldwork, no one would have discovered that chimpanzees use weapons because no chimpanzee in captivity is going to need to make a weapon in order to kill live prey for food; or that whales and dolphins are multicultural with different groups having different dialects, feeding and play behaviours; or that male and female cheetahs need to be housed separately in order to breed successfully in captivity because the males and females do not live together in the wild.
Good fieldwork is needed to protect wildlife and to preserve the ecosystems animals live in. There are aspects relating to holistic land management, population control via predator-prey interactions, and ecosystem balance in T&T that scientists and law-makers still do not know or understand enough about to draft laws regulating these systems. I always refer to life as a spiders' web–all parts are connected, whether flora, fauna, earth, water, wind or man–and what affects one strand affects the entire web. If we do not know how each strand is connected to the next, we can destroy our entire world by one ignorant decision. Too many policy-makers are pencil-pushers; you need to get your boots on and get dirty to understand what is happening outside if you want to do the right thing for our environment.
My second recommendation for preserving wild animals is to make them economically valuable to local people, such as has been done with the leatherback turtles in communities like Grande Riviere and Matura. Laws need to be passed that create incentives for people to want to keep the animals around and take care of them, and one way of ensuring that locals will protect the animals is if they can make a living from them. Money is a major motivator and economic factors can work to either help animals or to harm them. Poachers and criminals capture and kill animals because there is a market for national and international trade in exotic animals such as snakes, parrots and monkeys, and for wild meat. Pet stores in T&T often blatantly sell protected species because people in T&T buy them. Land in T&T is also regularly raped and used for planting and harvesting illegal drugs such as marijuana because there is an avenue for exportation. An example of creation is ecotourism, where locals benefit from income through renting hotels or guest houses; providing transportation; sale of food and drinks; opportunities to display and sell local arts, craft and souvenirs; tour-guiding ventures etc.
These recommendations will be continued in our next column.
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