Con­ser­va­tion of the na­tion's bio­di­ver­si­ty can save rev­enue ex­pen­di­ture up to $30 mil­lion per an­num.The state­ment was made dur­ing Fri­day's award cer­e­mo­ny of the Bio­di­ver­si­ty Re­search Poster and Pa­per Sym­po­sium by Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Pro­fes­sor of En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence An­drew Lawrence.Lawrence not­ed that while there were philo­soph­i­cal rea­sons to jus­ti­fy the prop­er man­age­ment of nat­ur­al re­sources, peo­ple have in­creas­ing­ly be­gan to ad­dress the eco­nom­ic side of bio­di­ver­si­ty.

He urged T&T to think dif­fer­ent­ly about how we man­aged the en­vi­ron­ment and not fall prey to the Unit­ed King­dom which was los­ing an es­ti­mate of two species (plant and an­i­mal) each year and suf­fered the loss of £$1.5 bil­lion in health cost due to its de­cline of 'green spaces' in the city.De­liv­er­ing an ad­dress on be­half of Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the min­istry Veron­i­ca Bel­grave, al­lud­ed to the min­istry's cur­rent ef­forts to pro­tect the bi­o­log­i­cal re­sources of the coun­try.

Bel­grave, who dis­trib­uted prizes to the six dis­tin­guished awardees of both the poster and oral cat­e­gories of the sym­po­sium, re­mind­ed the au­di­ence that 2011-the In­ter­na­tion­al Year of Forests-will wit­ness the con­tin­ued ef­forts of her min­istry in con­duct­ing re­search ac­tiv­i­ties which will act as a con­duit of in­for­ma­tion to as­sist in the sound man­age­ment of the na­tion's re­sources.

AWARDEES

Poster Com­pe­ti­tion:

1st-Melis­sa Atwell

2nd-Ju­dith Gob­in

3rd-An­drea Sco­bie

Oral Pre­sen­ta­tion Com­pe­ti­tion:

1st-Michelle Caz­abon- Manette

2nd-Dar­shan­jit Narang

3rd-Nigel Austin.