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Thursday, June 26, 2025

Govt looking at more protection for turtles

by

20110223

Gov­ern­ment's up­com­ing leg­isla­tive moves to fur­ther tur­tle preser­va­tion will in­clude con­sul­ta­tions with all stake­hold­ers, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath has said. Bharath spoke fol­low­ing a meet­ing on Mon­day with New Zealand an­ti-whal­ing con­ser­va­tion­ist Pe­te Bethune. The lat­ter is in Trinidad to speak at a work­shop yes­ter­day, host­ed by groups, in­clud­ing the TEW, at the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. Bharath said Gov­ern­ment al­ready had been com­mit­ted to ini­ti­ate steps to safe­guard cer­tain lo­cal species, in­clud­ing tur­tles.

He said an anom­aly ex­ist­ed in cur­rent leg­is­la­tion since the Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Act un­der the En­vi­ron­ment Min­istry for­bids tur­tle-hunt­ing, al­though the Fish­eries Act of 1916 al­lows an open sea­son be­tween March 1 and Sep­tem­ber 30. Bharath said Gov­ern­ment would move to ad­dress the loop­hole lat­er this year. Un­der cur­rent leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing an open sea­son, a num­ber of per­sons make their liveli­hood from hunt­ing the species in both is­lands. Con­tro­ver­sial con­ser­va­tion­ist Bethune, an oil ex­plo­ration en­gi­neer, had been promi­nent with the Sea Shep­herd (SS) an­ti-whal­ing group of An­i­mal Plan­et's, Whale Wars se­ries.

Ac­cord­ing to Wikipedia, Bethune's con­nec­tion with SS was sev­ered af­ter an in­ci­dent last year in which Bethune clashed with a Japan­ese whal­ing ves­sel. Wikipedia records state he was ar­rest­ed and charged with "tres­pass­ing, as­sault, il­le­gal pos­ses­sion of a knife, de­struc­tion of prop­er­ty and ob­struc­tion of busi­ness."

Bethune re­ceived a sus­pend­ed sen­tence, was banned from Japan for five years and de­port­ed. He lat­er formed his own group, Earth­race. IETV which in­ter­viewed Bethune last Fri­day on his ar­rival, de­scribed him as "mil­i­tant."


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