Rhon­dor Dowlat

Hun­dreds of acres of land are be­ing bull­dozed and burnt in the Las Cuevas area caus­ing se­ri­ous con­cerns for the liveli­hood of scores of vil­lagers in the Las Cuevas fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty who de­pend on the bay to sur­vive.

They want the land de­vel­op­ment and burn­ing at the Las Cuevas Es­tate to halt im­me­di­ate­ly and are call­ing for a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be car­ried out by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA).

It is es­ti­mat­ed that the loss of food­bas­ket for the Las Cuevas com­mu­ni­ty could fall in ex­cess of $10 mil­lion per year.

These were the ma­jor con­cerns of sec­re­tary of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS), Gary Aboud, who spoke on be­half of the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Aboud, an en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist, said with the re­moval of the for­est cov­er the fresh­wa­ter/salt wa­ter bal­ance will be af­fect­ed by the run off from the de­vel­oped land.

T&T Guardian un­der­stands that of the 1,500 acres of land at Las Cuevas, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 468 acres owned by busi­ness­man George Aboud is be­ing de­vel­oped. On that area of land, bull­doz­ing and grad­ing works have al­ready be­gun.

The own­er when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day said he vis­it­ed the site just yes­ter­day along with EMA of­fi­cials who are cur­rent­ly look­ing in­to the claims made by FFOS.

"We went there and the EMA of­fi­cials looked at the area in­clud­ing the beach," Aboud said.

He as­sured that he got the nec­es­sary ap­proval from EMA.

George Aboud said the de­vel­op­ment work cur­rent­ly tak­ing place was not deemed harm­ful in any way.

"We found that cer­tain pro­to­cols and re­quire­ments of the law have not been fol­lowed and it's on those grounds that we have start­ed le­gal ac­tion, in the form of di­rect pri­vate par­ty ac­tion," Gary Aboud said.

He added that the EMA has 60 days to in­ves­ti­gate and re­port to the FFOS on their find­ings.

"We wait on the EMA and if their in­ves­ti­ga­tion is not sat­is­fac­to­ry or thor­ough enough, we will pro­ceed to lit­i­gate against the EMA for im­prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing and pros­e­cut­ing," Aboud said.

He how­ev­er, made it clear that he has no grouse with the de­vel­op­er, who is his first cousin. "We are de­pend­ing on the EMA to en­sure that the law does not favour some and pe­nal­ize oth­ers," Gary Aboud said.

From an eco­log­i­cal view, he said, if all the for­est and the fresh wa­ter goes in­to the sea it will pre­vent the fish from spawn­ing and these fish­es are used for live bait in the catch­ing of oth­er fish­es by fish­er­men.

"This will af­fect the fish­eries neg­a­tive­ly," Aboud said.

T&T Guardian was told that the Las Cuevas fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty de­pends on the live bait to sup­port ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70 per cent of its Carite and King Fish catch in vol­ume and val­ue.

They fear that when the rainy sea­son be­gins in Ju­ly, this mas­sive clear­ing of nat­ur­al veg­e­ta­tion and coastal buffer zones may cause ir­re­versible dam­age to the fish­eries due to fresh wa­ter im­bal­ances and sil­ta­tion.

The im­pact of this may crip­ple the liveli­hoods of many for gen­er­a­tions to come.

An of­fi­cial at the EMA, who wished not to be iden­ti­fied, when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day said that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter has al­ready been ini­ti­at­ed.