Kevon Felmine

Plans to curb the de­ple­tion of T&T's flo­ra and fau­na as Gov­ern­ment gets set to adopt a new wildlife pol­i­cy could see strin­gent re­stric­tions be­ing im­posed on hunters and the wild-meat trade.

Ad­dress­ing the first pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the draft of a na­tion­al wildlife pol­i­cy at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (Na­pa) South Cam­pus on Mon­day, Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Gan­ga Singh said al­though T&T pos­sessed a rich bio­di­ver­si­ty there con­tin­ued to be a de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the coun­try's wildlife.

Singh spoke to an au­di­ence of hunters, wildlife con­ser­va­tion­ists and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists par­tic­i­pat­ing in a two-hour group dis­cus­sions be­fore pre­sent­ing their opin­ions on what the draft should ad­dress.

Cur­rent­ly, lo­cal wildlife is sup­posed to be pro­tect­ed un­der the Con­ser­va­tion of Wildlife Act 1958 but ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, its con­di­tions con­tin­ue to be plagued by over-hunt­ing, pol­lu­tion, de­for­esta­tion and for­est fires, among oth­er forms of degra­da­tion. Singh out­lined the im­por­tance of the draft.

"De­spite su­per­fi­cial amend­ments to the act to ad­dress cer­tain man­age­ment is­sues since 1958, there con­tin­ues to be a de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the coun­try's wildlife re­sources," he said. "Grow­ing pop­u­la­tion pres­sures, in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion and un­sus­tain­able util­i­sa­tion of the coun­try's bi­o­log­i­cal re­sources have re­sult­ed in the sig­nif­i­cant de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment."

The new pol­i­cy seeks to pro­hib­it the hunt­ing, cap­ture, pos­ses­sion and sale of all wildlife species or de­riv­a­tive prod­ucts with­out a per­mit. The same ap­plies for wild plants. If the pol­i­cy is adopt­ed in its present form, there will al­so be a ban on the sale of wild game and wa­ter­fowl.

Re­stric­tions will al­so be placed on night-time hunt­ing and there will be des­ig­nat­ed sea­sons for the hunt­ing of spe­cif­ic game. The draft al­so in­cludes a cap to be placed on the num­ber of hunt­ing per­mits is­sued for in­di­vid­ual species. It al­so seeks to reg­u­late the train­ing and ex­er­cis­ing of hunt­ing dogs.

Singh said the new pol­i­cy is im­por­tant as wildlife plays a crit­i­cal role at both na­tion­al and lo­cal lev­els, main­ly through agri­cul­ture, fish­ing, hunt­ing, recre­ation, tourism, and hor­ti­cul­ture. He said with the new pol­i­cy, the Gov­ern­ment will be able to ef­fec­tive­ly pro­tect var­i­ous species un­der threat of ex­tinc­tion, whether res­i­dent or mi­gra­to­ry.

Singh said the con­sul­ta­tions were not on­ly to cre­ate na­tion­al aware­ness but to al­so em­pow­er dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions by al­low­ing them to as­sist in iden­ti­fy­ing the prob­lems fac­ing lo­cal wildlife.