Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat is en­cour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to tip off the zoo and Forestry Di­vi­sion about peo­ple who have il­le­gal wildlife in their pos­ses­sion. Ramb­harat said il­le­gal wildlife was be­ing smug­gled from near­by South Amer­i­can na­tions to T&T. He said the lat­est was a jaguar that was dropped off at the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo on Fri­day. Ramb­harat said it was not un­usu­al for peo­ple to con­tact the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo to hand over an an­i­mal they can longer take care of, are un­will­ing to care for, or, in a few cas­es, they no longer want to keep and risk pros­e­cu­tion.

Fri­day's call and drop off at the gate of the zoo was not un­usu­al ex­cept that the de­liv­ery in the pro­tec­tive crate was a young jaguar, ob­vi­ous­ly smug­gled in­to the coun­try, with­out a per­mit and with­out the ap­pro­pri­ate tests. The jaguar has been ex­am­ined by vets and quar­an­tined.

He said, "It’s the fright­en­ing side of the il­le­gal trade in wildlife par­tic­u­lar­ly out of Venezuela. This one was sur­ren­dered to us but my con­cern has al­ways been around those peo­ple who pur­chase or get these vi­cious an­i­mals as pets and lat­er aban­don them when they get old­er. To a ca­su­al ob­serv­er, this looks like an ocelot but it is a rel­a­tive­ly young jaguar. It’s about 30 inch­es long. We’ll con­tin­ue to en­cour­age peo­ple to tip us off via the soo or Forestry Di­vi­sion and to re­port any sus­pi­cion about il­le­gal wildlife."