Pao­lo Ker­na­han

Glid­ing down the placid, man-made chan­nel that leads to Bush Bush Is­land in the Nar­i­va Swamp al­ways fills me with pal­pa­ble an­tic­i­pa­tion. The small crew of my na­ture tele­vi­sion pro­gramme Bush Di­ary with Robert Clarke is packed in­to a mo­torised, tin soap dish. The boat­man is mak­ing twists and turns like a For­mu­la One dri­ver, while our fin­ger­nails dig in­to the edges of the boat, know­ing full well that the slight­est shift­ing of bal­ance could put us all in the black wa­ter.

Then we get that un­mis­tak­able scent... Just imag­ine a beau­ti­ful woman walk­ing past you in the street and in her wake she leaves a trail of the sweet­est per­fume to have ever reached your nose; just close your eyes and try to con­jure that men­tal scent for a mo­ment... Good, now try the ex­act op­po­site. That would prob­a­bly give you an ap­prox­i­ma­tion of the odour that ac­com­pa­nies the neo-trop­i­cal por­cu­pine.

Our boat­man, deaf­ened in his youth by a vir­u­lent fever, de­ploys his re­main­ing hy­per­sen­si­tive sens­es to hone in on some­thing which we have been track­ing for two years...and there it was. The boat wob­bled vi­o­lent­ly be­neath us as we did the not-rec­om­mend­ed thing and stood up in this bath­tub to get a look at the por­cu­pine.

There is noth­ing quite like see­ing a crea­ture like this in the wild, the sen­sa­tion is in­de­scrib­able. It was balled up in the vine-padded Y of a tree, its white-tipped quills al­most blend­ing in­to its sur­round­ings. The Bush Di­ary crew had nev­er seen the por­cu­pine any­where oth­er than the zoo, and here it was right in front of us. A few months lat­er we were head­ing back in the Bush Bush sanc­tu­ary and, nat­u­ral­ly, the team was on the look­out for the por­cu­pine spot­ted on the last oc­ca­sion. These crea­tures tend to in­hab­it a spe­cif­ic range once there is suf­fi­cient food in the area so we thought our ex­pec­ta­tions were rea­son­able. That was un­til we were told by our trust­ed guide that we were out of luck. "Ah feel dem fel­las cook him for Christ­mas."

It was dev­as­tat­ing to con­tem­plate, this crea­ture that we on­ly caught a glimpse of af­ter hav­ing searched tire­less­ly was now gone. One less por­cu­pine for vis­i­tors to the swamp to ex­pe­ri­ence. But at least some­one had a good cook-up right?! On Thurs­day the Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment, Roodal Mooni­lal, an­nounced the sus­pen­sion of the hunt­ing sea­son which was ex­pect­ed to be opened to­day. Con­cerns hinged pri­mar­i­ly on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of en­coun­ters be­tween hunters and a new species, the for­est dwelling ban­dit, seek-ing refuge from the far reach­ing ten­ta­cles of the state of emer­gency.

As one hunter quite right­ly point­ed out, this was al­ways an ever present threat as they of­ten have, shall we say, "awk­ward" en­coun­ters with mar­i­jua­na planters in the bush. But wait a minute... you use dogs to sniff out your quar­ry then blow away a three or four-pound agouti with a 12-gauge car­tridge yet you are not pre­pared to ac­cept the risk of get­ting shot by a gan­ja planter's pipe-gun? Where is your spir­it of com- pe­ti­tion? Next you will want to shoot agouti and lappe in the zoo. When the an­nounce­ment was made, the Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, sug­gest­ed that the hunters will be quite pleased with the col­lat­er­al ef­fect of this de­ci­sion as the tem­po­rary ban will re­sult in more an­i­mals to kill when the sea­son is even­tu­al­ly re­opened.

This is of course ridicu­lous and was ei­ther a crass at­tempt at hu­mour or a gen­uine (yet still in­ex­cus­able) man­i­fes­ta­tion of raw ig­no­rance. He did how­ev­er use a very im­por­tant word: com­merce. With the agouti fetch­ing as much as $100 a pound or more dur­ing the wild meat eat­ing fren­zy that is the Christ­mas sea­son, com­mer­cial hunt­ing has be­come a se­ri­ous busi­ness. This sus­pen­sion of the hunt­ing sea­son has ob­vi­ous­ly trig­gered a re­ac­tion with the hunters. One chap was heard to say "dis go af­fek the 'pro­fes­sion­al' hunters rell bad." What the hell is a pro­fes­sion­al hunter?

The Gov­ern­ment's li­cens­ing of hunters has cre­at­ed a com­mer­cial class of hunters who go out there to har­vest wildlife to meet a de­mand which it will nev­er be able to sa­ti­ate (which is why wild meat is rou­tine­ly im­port­ed from Vene-zuela.) Dur­ing open sea­son there are no quo­tas on how many an­i­mals a hunter can shoot in the for­est and, even if there were, who the hell is go­ing to be stand­ing at the for­est edge to check the hunter's haul as he emerges from the bush? Ad­di­tion­al­ly, if a hunter goes in­to the bush hop­ing for agouti and does not find any, he will shoot what­ev­er he gets. This means that the ocelot, anteater and por­cu­pine are fair game (you think you are eat­ing lappe, but it could be mon­key).

There are ap­par­ent­ly 9,000 reg­is­tered hunters in this coun­try who are li­censed to kill. There prob­a­bly is an equal or greater num­ber of un­reg­is­tered hunters. And let's get some­thing straight... there is no open sea­son or closed sea­son in Trinidad. Hunt­ing con­tin­ues year round and any­one who says oth­er­wise is a fool. With just about 14 game war­dens to pa­trol the en­tire coun­try, we can­not se­ri­ous­ly ex­pect the law to be en­forced. The min­is­ter al­so an­nounced this week a to­tal ban on tur­tle har­vest­ing. This will no doubt have vast swathes of the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty threat­en­ing to im­mo­late them­selves on the prom­e­nade with fu­el si­phoned from their gas tanks. "How we go eat! We chirren go cyar get school book!"

Fish­er­men have al­ways been giv­en the ben­e­fit of the doubt, even though when it comes to tur­tles most of it is by-catch (mean­ing the ac­ci­den­tal re­sult of fish­ing) and for those who ac­tive­ly seek out tur­tles it of­ten fetch­es such a poor price in the mar­ket, even though the de­mand is al­ways buoy­ant, it does not even seem worth­while. Bush Di­ary has ex­plored var­ied habi­tats across this coun­try over the course of rough­ly three years and while we are not a sci­en­tif­ic sur­vey, from our own ob­ser­va­tions and con­ver­sa­tions with suit­ably placed in­di­vid­u­als, it is be­com­ing clear­er that wildlife num­bers are dwin­dling dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

While I am of the opin­ion that the dras­tic "mora­to­ri­um" should be con­sid­ered at this time, it would be mean­ing­less with­out an ap­pre­cia­ble ad­just­ment to the num­ber of game war­dens on the ground. They would al­so have to be well com­pen­sat­ed, not on­ly in ac­knowl­edge­ment of the grave risks they face, but to serve as a de­ter­rent to en­gage in the wild meat trade them­selves. Sport hunters dis­tance them­selves from poach­ers and com­mer­cial hunters, com­mer­cial hunters dis­tance them­selves from poach­ers but for the an­i­mals, the bar­rel of any gun is the same.

Wild meat is not co­caine so noth­ing can be done on the de­mand side. I can't make peo­ple feel bad for gorg­ing them­selves on these beau­ti­ful crea­tures in a parang par­ty with a bel­ly full of pun­cheon. I do how­ev­er sin­cere­ly be­lieve that the time has come to hit the pause but­ton. Not on­ly will wildlife has some respite, but we can then re­strate­gise how these lim­it­ed re­sources ought to be prop­er­ly man­aged.

THOUGHTS

• There is noth­ing quite like see­ing a crea­ture like this in the wild, the sen­sa­tion is in­de­scrib­able.

• Dur­ing open sea­son there are no quo­tas on how many an­i­mals a hunter can shoot in the for­est.

• Wild meat is not co­caine so noth­ing can be done on the de­mand side.