OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

The re­stric­tions caused by the spread of COVID-19 ap­pear to be al­low­ing wildlife to ven­ture in­to places that they don’t nor­mal­ly fre­quent.

For­est Ranger Kis­han Ram­cha­ran yes­ter­day shared a video on so­cial me­dia, which drew a lot of trac­tion with a fam­i­ly of Neotrop­i­cal Riv­er Ot­ters swim­ming in a riv­er in the city cen­tre in Rio Claro.

The video was record­ed last week Fri­day along the Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road.

Ot­ters are rarely seen in Trinidad and To­ba­go as the an­i­mal is quite elu­sive and soli­tary.

“Ot­ters are usu­al­ly very soli­tary so you wouldn’t find them out­side see them out too much see­ing that it’s an ur­ban area in Rio Claro a lot of hu­man ac­tiv­i­ty a lot of traf­fic pass­ing there so it begs to dif­fer that these an­i­mals are see­ing less traf­fic mov­ing less ac­tiv­i­ty so we are as­sum­ing this is why they are out”, Ram­cha­ran said.

He added the video was record­ed by a close rel­a­tive and it was hard to miss be­cause of the splash­ing as the an­i­mals head­ed up­stream.

“There wasn’t much wa­ter in the riv­er so they were prob­a­bly look­ing for a place where they are more free-flow­ing wa­ter,” he said.

Glob­al­ly there have been sight­ings of wild an­i­mals in ur­ban spaces, as many across the world stay iso­lat­ed to pro­tect them­selves from the spread of COVID-19.

“I can on­ly as­sume these sight­ings are due to less hu­man ac­tiv­i­ty out be­cause of the re­stric­tion of the coro­n­avirus I def­i­nite­ly think that an­i­mals would re­lease some­thing is dif­fer­ent and the place is more qui­et and they will tend to ven­ture out” he added.

He added, “I will like the urge the pub­lic as we are at the clo­sure of the hunt­ing sea­son at the end of Feb­ru­ary we not sup­pose to be hunt­ing any an­i­mals be­cause of the law the wildlife act, so as an­i­mals may tend to come out a lit­tle bit more. We have igua­nas be­ing spot­ted the opos­sum or the man­i­cou mov­ing around a lit­tle bit more. And these an­i­mals will tend to be more a lit­tle more brave as a lot of us are in­side and I am urg­ing you all, I am plead­ing to the pub­lic that to help con­serve the wildlife that we have here in Trinidad, we have to make it seen for our kids in the fu­ture so they could un­der­stand and see these an­i­mals live.”