Kali­fa Clyne

T&T's strate­gic lo­ca­tion be­tween South and North Amer­i­ca has made it vul­ner­a­ble as a trans-ship­ment point for the il­le­gal wildlife traf­fick­ing, an ac­tiv­i­ty giv­en a mon­e­tary val­ue of over US $30 bil­lion. This was re­vealed by act­ing deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment An­tho­ny Ram­nar­ine. Ram­nar­ine was speak­ing on Mon­day dur­ing the launch of a poster as part of the aware­ness cam­paign on wildlife trade man­age­ment in T&T. The cam­paign is a joint ini­tia­tive of the Forestry Di­vi­sion, Min­istry of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment, Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of T&T and the In­ter­na­tion­al Fund for An­i­mal Wel­fare (IFAW).

Ac­cord­ing to Ram­nar­ine, the il­le­gal trade of wildlife was third glob­al­ly af­ter drug traf­fick­ing and arms traf­fick­ing. He said law en­force­ment ef­forts had not been enough and saw a new strat­e­gy of ed­u­ca­tion re­sources was be­ing used. He said the posters would be used to en­hance the ef­forts of wildlife law en­force­ment and high­light the forestry di­vi­sion as the agency re­spon­si­ble for is­su­ing wildlife per­mits. "Mem­bers of the pub­lic who wish to trade in wildlife, whether im­port or ex­port should con­sult the forestry di­vi­sion or the zo­o­log­i­cal so­ci­ety of T&T," said Ram­nar­ine.

Act­ing pres­i­dent of the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety Ben­jamin De La Rosa said pro­tect­ing wildlife her­itage was a shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty not just the bur­den of the Gov­ern­ment. He said the so­ci­ety had done its part by pro­vid­ing hous­ing for an­i­mals in­volved in court mat­ters from at­tempts to traf­fic them. "Smug­gling of an­i­mals is an en­force­ment chal­lenge which war­dens have to face reg­u­lar­ly," said de la Rosa. Pro­gramme Di­rec­tor of Wildlife Trade at IFAW Kelvin Alie said the poster was the sec­ond part of the cam­paign, the first be­ing the train­ing of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and game war­dens in ar­eas such as in­ves­ti­gat­ing break­ing of wildlife laws. He said phase three would in­volve the train­ing of man­age­ment and de­ci­sion-mak­ers.

He said peo­ple need­ed to be aware of the role they played in terms of wildlife traf­fick­ing. "The per­son who pur­chas­es these an­i­mals are the last link in a chain of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties," said Alie. "What is at stake is lit­er­al­ly life on this plan­et," he said. Act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary at the Min­istry Joy Creese de­liv­ered an ad­dress on be­half of Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal who was un­able to at­tend. The ad­dress high­light­ed Gov­ern­ment's amend­ment to the Fish­eries Act to com­plete­ly ban the hunt­ing of all ma­rine tur­tles as a demon­stra­tion of the coun­try's com­mit­ment to meet­ing in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions.