RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Paw prints of what ap­pears to be a large cat have been dis­cov­ered in the Los Charos forests of south-west Trinidad spark­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion among zo­o­log­i­cal ex­perts over whether they be­long to a smug­gled jaguar.

Res­i­dents of Pa­lo Seco have re­port­ed sight­ings of the elu­sive cat, prompt­ing the need for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

On Tues­day, Guardian Me­dia joined Val­lence Ramb­harat, the head of the Hunters Search and Res­cue team, as they ven­tured in­to the forests in search of the mys­te­ri­ous fe­line.

Ramb­harat em­pha­sised the sig­nif­i­cance of tak­ing these re­ports se­ri­ous­ly, high­light­ing the po­ten­tial dan­ger of a jaguar’s pres­ence in Trinidad, where the species is not na­tive.

“There are ways to sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly eval­u­ate whether it is true that a jaguar is roam­ing the forests,” he said when asked about the paw prints. Ac­com­pa­nied by the San­ta Flo­ra po­lice and game war­dens from the Forestry Di­vi­sion, Ramb­harat said he and his team have al­so col­lect­ed da­ta to be ex­am­ined by zo­o­log­i­cal ex­perts.

He said their da­ta col­lec­tion process in­volved doc­u­ment­ing paw prints and oth­er marks found along riv­er banks and in the forests, as well as gath­er­ing stool sam­ples and search­ing for scratch marks on trees. Ramb­harat shared an eye­wit­ness ac­count, say­ing, “A farmer in the vil­lage said he was dig­ging yam and saw what ap­pears to be a big cat nib­bling at a pig car­cass.”

Re­gard­ing the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the prints, Ramb­harat de­ferred to the ex­perts, ac­knowl­edg­ing the po­ten­tial dan­ger posed by jaguars.

He ex­plained, “We have to ask the ex­perts to take a look at this be­cause a jaguar is a dan­ger­ous cat and could cause fa­tal­i­ties among hu­mans. The on­ly cat we have is the ocelot which has not ever caused a fa­tal­i­ty.” Ramb­harat urged smug­glers to con­sid­er the con­se­quences of dis­turb­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ecosys­tem, em­pha­sis­ing the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing a prop­er bal­ance.

In re­sponse to the dis­cov­er­ies, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture con­firmed in a press re­lease the pres­ence of paw prints.

The min­istry re­vealed that they are work­ing close­ly with the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety and its ex­perts to ac­cu­rate­ly clas­si­fy the prints.

They as­sured the pub­lic that they will pro­vide up­dates on the sit­u­a­tion, with of­fi­cers re­main­ing vig­i­lant and re­spon­sive to con­firmed re­ports.

To as­sist in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, mem­bers of the pub­lic were en­cour­aged to con­tact the Wildlife Sec­tion of the Forestry Di­vi­sion if they have any in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing il­le­gal an­i­mals.

The Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture reaf­firmed its ded­i­ca­tion to ad­dress­ing the is­sue and main­tain­ing the well-be­ing of Trinidad’s wildlife and ecosys­tem.

As ex­perts analyse the col­lect­ed da­ta and paw prints, the ques­tion of the jaguar’s pres­ence in the Los Charos forests re­mains unan­swered.

Over the past few weeks, res­i­dents of No 4 Road, Pa­lo Seco have been re­port­ing sight­ings of a cat which re­sem­bles a jaguar. Res­i­dents claim the an­i­mal was re­lax­ing near a pump­ing jack sev­er­al kilo­me­tres in­side the vil­lage last week. How­ev­er, on­ly two peo­ple saw it. So­cial me­dia was abuzz over the week­end when some­one post­ed that smug­glers lost an adult jaguar in Pa­lo Seco.

Sev­er­al res­i­dents in­clud­ing Afisha La Motte said vil­lagers have been keep­ing their chil­dren close in fear that the elu­sive cat will pounce.