Pao­lo Ker­na­han

The Min­istry of the En­vi­ron­ment, af­ter a con­sid­er­able pe­ri­od of pub­lic­i­ty, has launched pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions on the draft wildlife pol­i­cy. The first was held at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, which, by the way, is out­fit­ted with the most ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly un­com­fort­able seats I've ever had the dis­plea­sure of squirm­ing in.

Giv­en the im­por­tance of this op­por­tu­ni­ty for pub­lic com­ment, it was dis­ap­point­ing that the au­di­ence pri­mar­i­ly com­prised hunters. With the ex­cep­tion of the Pa­pa Bois en­vi­ron­men­tal ad­vo­ca­cy group and Ri­car­do Meade of the El So­cor­ro Wildlife Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre, en­vi­ron­men­tal groups were woe­ful­ly un­der-rep­re­sent­ed.

Head of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Hunters' As­so­ci­a­tions, Bud­dy Miller, leaned over to me and whis­pered that the tree-hug­gers are on­ly avail­able to voice their opin­ions through key­strokes. Go­ing on­ly on the first two gath­er­ings, I'd have to say he is right.

At the first con­sul­ta­tion ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 per cent of the au­di­ence was hunters; at the sec­ond, held in San­gre Grande, it was clos­er. The draft doc­u­ment, while not per­fect, sig­nals the in­tent of the Gov­ern­ment to recog­nise the im­por­tance of wildlife and wildlife habi­tats and ap­pears to lean to­wards rigid mea­sures to en­sure their pro­tec­tion.

The pa­per en­vi­sions a broad­en­ing of the de­f­i­n­i­tion of wildlife to in­clude low­er-or­der species such as fresh­wa­ter fish. This is im­por­tant, con­sid­er­ing that the un­con­trolled har­vest­ing of, for ex­am­ple, the blue and hairy crabs, is dev­as­tat­ing. If not ad­dressed, there can be no doubt that these crea­tures will be pushed to the brink of ex­tinc­tion.

Just how wide the pol­i­cy doc­u­ment pro­pos­es to cast the net is not ex­act­ly clear.This em­bry­on­ic leg­is­la­tion hopes to de­vel­op a list of species which will be placed in­to four cat­e­gories: crit­i­cal­ly en­dan­gered, en­dan­gered, vul­ner­a­ble, and near-threat­ened. That list will be de­ter­mined by the ever ex­pand­ing, dele­te­ri­ous im­pact of man on the en­vi­ron­ment in this coun­try.

There is, how­ev­er, a crit­i­cal flaw in the draft pol­i­cy. Even as it pro­pos­es strict reg­u­la­tion of wildlife, it ap­pears to be do­ing so in a da­ta vac­u­um. "...us­ing the best avail­able lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic in­for­ma­tion..." Those words are ex­tract­ed from the pol­i­cy and there­in lies the rub. This pol­i­cy doc­u­ment is march­ing for­ward with in­for­ma­tion that is ei­ther ter­ri­bly out­dat­ed or nonex­is­tent.

Now this is par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling in the con­text of a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion where hunters are more than hap­py to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion about wildlife.

In lo­cal folk­lore there is Pa­pa Bois, fa­ther and pro­tec­tor of the for­est and wildlife. Bud­dy Miller is Pa­pa 12-Gauge, stew­ard of the hunt­ing fra­ter­ni­ty. While Mr Miller is an af­fa­ble per­son, one of the nicest you will ever meet, the in­for­ma­tion he pro­vid­ed at the con­sul­ta­tions is high­ly sus­pect. For one, he con­fi­dent­ly sug­gests that red brock­et deer are flour­ish­ing in aban­doned cane fields in Cen­tral Trinidad.

On the face of it, this is the most ridicu­lous thing I've ever heard. But in the ab­sence of con­crete sci­en­tif­ic sur­veys, it can­not be rub­bished en­tire­ly. The framers of this pol­i­cy doc­u­ment, how­ev­er, cer­tain­ly can't take Mr Miller's word for it. I was al­so quite sur­prised to hear Mr Miller sug­gest that the igua­na is not a favourite among Trinida­di­ans. Bud­dy, you could not be more mis­tak­en about that.

An­oth­er ex­am­ple of the per­ils pre­sent­ed by this dearth of da­ta came from a for­mer min­is­ter of agri­cul­ture. Dr Reeza Mo­hammed told the gath­er­ing that per­haps the ocelot (a lo­cal wild cat) is not as en­dan­gered as we think and grow­ing num­bers could be pres­sur­ing the pop­u­la­tions of agouti and deer.

Now that is just mad­ness. In­for­ma­tion about the ocelot is lim­it­ed, but at least one study has sug­gest­ed that there could be as few as 200 in the wild. We can't be sure what the fig­ure is to­day, but it is cer­tain­ly a can­di­date for ex­tir­pa­tion. We rav­en­ous­ly con­sume the ocelot's pri­ma­ry food source, which is the agouti, and steadi­ly re­duce this wide-rang­ing crea­ture's habi­tat through du­bi­ous de­vel­op­men­tal im­per­a­tives.

Hunters have re­sound­ing­ly con­demned the doc­u­ment as a frame­work of per­se­cu­tion and tor­ment for law-abid­ing sport hunters who are re­al­ly con­ser­va­tion­ists at heart.

They are vi­o­lent­ly op­posed to a short­en­ing of the hunt­ing sea­son be­cause they per­ceive some cor­re­la­tion be­tween the ab­sence of hunters in the for­est and the un­chal­lenged ex­pan­sion of mar­i­jua­na plan­ta­tions. Hunters are not law-en­force­ment agents and as such these protes­ta­tions should not be giv­en any con­sid­er­a­tion in the for­mu­la­tion of our laws.

The em­pha­sis here must be the gath­er­ing of knowl­edge! Bud­dy Miller him­self point­ed out that the lappe, a mid-sized ro­dent-like crea­ture, breeds every four years. For that rea­son alone this an­i­mal should be added to the list of pro­tect­ed species.

This wildlife pol­i­cy is a step in the right di­rec­tion but with­out the back­bone of con­crete da­ta about wildlife pop­u­la­tions any laws de­rived from it may not ad­e­quate­ly serve the best in­ter­ests of wildlife in this coun­try. There are two more con­sul­ta­tions and if you en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivists can't spare the time to be there, don't com­plain if you end up with a wildlife-hunt­ing pol­i­cy.