Chester Sam­bra­no

Ad­min­is­tra­tors at the Wild­fowl Trust in Pointe-a-Pierre say there has been an­oth­er bur­glary and 18 White Faced Whistling Ducks were stolen.

In a state­ment shar­ing the “heart­break­ing news”, the Trust said the theft was dis­cov­ered on Wednes­day morn­ing when avi­cul­ture staff was do­ing rou­tine feed­ing. They be­lieve the bur­glary took place on Tues­day evening af­ter 4.30 pm.

Footage from se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras shows three young men in the vicin­i­ty of the Trust with cut­lass­es in their hands.

It was not the first theft at the Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty. The biggest was on June 5, 2021, World En­vi­ron­ment Day.

Of­fi­cials of the Trust said thefts seem to oc­cur al­most every year as the birds are very at­trac­tive to col­lec­tors, of which there are a few in T&T.

“It is like­ly that a col­lec­tor paid some peo­ple to fill an or­der which led to the raid at the Trust.”

The state­ment con­tin­ued: “These beau­ti­ful lo­cal ducks were once our birds and be­came ex­tinct in the 1950s. The Wild­fowl Trust brought them back from abroad and have suc­cess­ful­ly been breed­ing them for even­tu­al re­lease back in­to their ex­ist­ing nat­ur­al habi­tats in our coun­try.”

The ducks re­quire peo­ple with spe­cial knowl­edge of their ecosys­tem de­mands, feed re­quire­ments and habits be­cause they are very beau­ti­ful but rare and docile.

The Trust is ap­peal­ing to who­ev­er has them to re­turn them safe­ly.

The val­ue of the stolen ducks could be as much as $40,000.