Hunters will have to wait un­til next Feb­ru­ary to know if they can pur­sue their le­gal chal­lenge against Gov­ern­ment's two-year ban on hunt­ing on State lands.Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the group and Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Gan­ga Singh met for a hear­ing of the law suit be­fore Jus­tice Joan Charles in the Port-of-Spain High Court yes­ter­day.

The group, Con­fed­er­a­tion of Hunters As­so­ci­a­tions for Con­ser­va­tion of T&T, claims to con­sist of al­most 12,000 hunters and is seek­ing leave to pur­sue its ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion over Singh's de­ci­sion to im­pose the ban and to in­crease fines for its breach.It is claim­ing the de­ci­sion was ir­ra­tional and un­law­ful as hunters had a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion that they would be al­lowed to hunt dur­ing a spec­i­fied hunt­ing sea­son each year.

The group, which is be­ing led by Bud­die Gor­don Miller, is al­so claim­ing it was not prop­er­ly con­sult­ed be­fore Cab­i­net made its de­ci­sion on the is­sue.Dur­ing yes­ter­day's hear­ing Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, who is head­ing the State's team of lawyers, sub­mit­ted that the court did not have the ju­ris­dic­tion to hear the case as it dealt with Gov­ern­ment's wildlife con­ser­va­tion pol­i­cy."The court ought not to in­ter­vene as it its a pub­lic pol­i­cy de­ci­sion. Gov­ern­ment is en­ti­tled to de­cide on pol­i­cy in var­i­ous ar­eas of gov­er­nance," Mar­tineau said.

He said the group could not have a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion that Par­lia­ment would not change laws re­lat­ed to hunt­ing."They can't ex­pect the law to re­main there for­ev­er," Mar­tineau said.He al­so sub­mit­ted that the hunters did not have a statu­to­ry right to con­sul­ta­tion but not­ed that Singh met with them once, be­fore an­nounc­ing the ban on Oc­to­ber 1.

The group's lawyers did not re­spond to Mar­tineau's sub­mis­sions yes­ter­day, in­stead sug­gest­ing the writ­ten sub­mis­sions be filed by both par­ties be­fore Jus­tice Charles gives her de­ci­sion on Feb­ru­ary 10.In an­nounc­ing the mora­to­ri­um, at a post-Cab­i­net new con­fer­ence Singh said it was nec­es­sary to pro­tect cer­tain species of wildlife, in­clud­ing agouti, lappe, deer and quenk (wild hog), from ex­tinc­tion. The hunt­ing sea­son is tra­di­tion­al­ly opened from Oc­to­ber 1 and lasts to the end of Feb­ru­ary the fol­low­ing year.

As part of the ini­tia­tive, the penal­ty for hunt­ing in a game sanc­tu­ary was raised from a $1,000 fine or three months' im­pris­on­ment to a $100,000 fine or 12 months'im­pris­on­ment.The fine for hunt­ing a pro­tect­ed an­i­mal with­out a spe­cial game li­cence from the Chief Game War­den has been raised from $1,000 or three months' im­pris­on­ment to $50,000 for "each an­i­mal".

Short­ly af­ter the an­nounce­ment, the hunters held sev­er­al pub­lic meet­ings through­out the coun­try and staged a protest out­side the Forestry Di­vi­sion re­quest­ing that they re­ceive hunt­ing li­cences.The group is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Lemuel Mur­phy and Ni­rad Ram­rek­ers­ingh.