The Coun­cil of Pres­i­dents of the En­vi­ron­ment (COPE) is thank­ing Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh for grant­i­ng them an ex­emp­tion to pa­trol beach­es af­ter 6 pm to pro­tect sea tur­tles. 

“We have to be­gin by say­ing thank you to the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go for hear­ing our voic­es and the voic­es of the 9,300 peo­ple that re­quest­ed the per­mis­sion for night pa­trols to pro­tect our sea tur­tles,” COPE trea­sur­er Kristo­pher Rat­tans­ingh told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“We al­so have to thank every­one who played a part in hav­ing such a great im­pact on this by sign­ing the pe­ti­tion and play­ing their part in pro­tect­ing sea tur­tles. We have to high­light that peo­ple from around the world saw how im­por­tant this was and how nec­es­sary it was to pro­tect sea tur­tles as they signed and shared the pe­ti­tion ask­ing for this change as well.”

Their pe­ti­tion be­gan as nest­ing sea­son for the an­i­mals be­gan in Feb­ru­ary and is ex­pect­ed to peak be­tween April and May be­fore end­ing in Au­gust. The rep­tiles fre­quent­ly vis­it the coun­try’s shores to lay their eggs, how­ev­er, are of­ten the vic­tims of poach­ers and oth­er un­scrupu­lous ac­tiv­i­ties de­spite be­ing list­ed as En­vi­ron­men­tal­ly Sen­si­tive Species by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency (EMA). 

But now that the ex­emp­tion is ex­pect­ed to be giv­en by the Min­is­ter, COPE is hop­ing for a smooth reg­is­tra­tion process so pa­trols can be­gin im­me­di­ate­ly.

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, was quot­ed in a re­lease yes­ter­day as de­scrib­ing the de­ci­sion as “a win for sea tur­tles and the com­mu­ni­ties pro­mot­ing their con­ser­va­tion.”

The re­lease al­so said the chair of the EMA and the Sea Tur­tle Task Force, Nadra Nathai Gyan, ex­pressed the Task Force’s, and wider sea tur­tle con­ser­va­tion com­mu­ni­ty’s, ela­tion at the de­ci­sion and is call­ing for com­pli­ance with the new amend­ments from the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

In Oc­to­ber 2020, beach­es were re­opened af­ter be­ing shut a sec­ond time due to a large spike in COVID-19 cas­es, how­ev­er, they would on­ly be open to the pub­lic be­tween 6 am and 6 pm.

The Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tion was up­dat­ed on Wednes­day, March 17 and would be in ef­fect un­til April 4.