The Pointe-a-Pierre Wild­fowl Trust is cel­e­brat­ing its 45th an­niver­sary this year, and is mark­ing this sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone with a new book, Some Flow­er­ing Trees of Trinidad & To­ba­go: Val­ues & Link­ages, writ­ten by en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist and pres­i­dent of the trust, Mol­ly R Gaskin. The book was for­mal­ly launched by Ger­ard Mitchell, coun­try chair­man of Shell Trinidad Lim­it­ed, who spon­sored this pub­li­ca­tion. One of the most im­por­tant as­pects of this book is that it teach­es about link­ages. With this book, one can learn more about the val­ue of beau­ti­ful trees and their im­por­tance med­i­c­i­nal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly, as well as their im­por­tance to nu­mer­ous species of lo­cal wildlife.

Prof John B Agard, se­nior lec­tur­er in the De­part­ment of Life Sci­ences and Agri­cul­ture, UWI, St Au­gus­tine, writes in the book's pref­ace, "Man needs to en­cour­age the species di­ver­si­ty that Ms Gaskin's book pro­motes. "As one reads the text and be­comes fa­mil­iar with the species that she has se­lect­ed, there is re­vealed the im­por­tance and the sig­nif­i­cance of our twin-is­lands' bio­di­ver­si­ty. "She en­dors­es an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of our nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment and makes us tru­ly proud of what con­sti­tutes part of the nat­ur­al lega­cy of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go." Sen­a­tor Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith, in his ad­dress, said: "I hope that this book will have the widest pos­si­ble dis­tri­b­u­tion and an en­thu­si­as­tic read­er­ship well be­yond T&T. We have been en­dowed with many mar­velous trees, whose beau­ty we of­ten take for grant­ed.

"Af­ter pe­rus­ing this very at­trac­tive and easy to read book, I am con­vinced we will all be con­vert­ed to an­oth­er lev­el of ap­pre­ci­a­tion. The book is a se­ri­ous thought-pro­vok­er and is, in a sense, invit­ing us to sep­a­rate greed from eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. "It opens for us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect deeply on what true de­vel­op­ment is, and to recog­nise the ex­tent to which we have rav­aged na­ture in the name of progress." Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, con­grat­u­lat­ed the trust and Shell Trinidad for spon­sor­ing the book "This book doc­u­ments the im­por­tance of our trees and forests and their many vi­tal link­ages and adds valu­able doc­u­ment­ed re­search ma­te­r­i­al," he said.