Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Act­ing pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith was on hand to for­mal­ly launch the Pointe-A-Pierre Wild Fowl Trust's lat­est book, Some Flow­er­ing Trees of Trinidad and To­ba­go: Val­ues and Link­ages, at Pe­trea Place, Pointe-A-Pierre, on May 31. Hamel-Smith, in de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, com­mend­ed the Trust for its con­tin­u­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal work, but re­mind­ed the or­gan­i­sa­tion of the work ahead. "Al­though we have come quite a dis­tance, we still have a long way to go to ap­pre­ci­ate the re­al val­ue of our wet­lands, forests, trees, shrubs and non-do­mes­ti­cat­ed an­i­mals.

"Much re­mains to be done to trans­late in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions in­to peo­ple par­tic­i­pa­tion na­tion­wide. This is where ad­vo­ca­cy is im­por­tant," Hamel-Smith added. The book, which fea­tures pho­tographs of T&T's rich flo­ra tak­en by Trust pres­i­dent Mol­ly Gaskin, was pro­duced with the as­sis­tance of Shell Trinidad Ltd and in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the Trust's 45th an­niver­sary. Con­ser­va­tor of Forests, An­tho­ny Ram­nar­ine, who rep­re­sent­ed Hous­ing and En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, com­mend­ed the trust for its com­mit­ment to the en­vi­ron­ment.

"The Pointe-A-Pierre Wild Fowl Trust, which was es­tab­lished in 1966, has made an in­deli­ble mark on our bi­o­log­i­cal­ly di­verse land­scape," Ram­nar­ine said. He al­so laud­ed the trust for its suc­cess­ful breed and re­lease pro­gramme, which saw the breed­ing and re­lease of 103 Scar­let Ibis­es back in­to the wild and the re­cent re­lease of a batch of blue and gold macaws in­to their nat­ur­al habi­tat in the Nar­i­va Swamp. Ger­ard Mitchell, coun­try chair­man of Shell Trinidad, said the com­pa­ny was com­mit­ted to work­ing with the trust for the preser­va­tion of our nat­ur­al re­sources.

He said the book ex­plored all as­pects of the tremen­dous val­ues of our trees, which he said were "worth more alive than dead." He added that the book was time­ly, since 2011 was In­ter­na­tion­al Year of the Forests and high­light­ed the need to pro­tect the wet­lands and rain forests.