Sascha Wil­son

A Ch­agua­nas man caught with 18 car­cass­es of the Scar­let Ibis, the na­tion­al bird, was sen­tenced yes­ter­day to 18 months' in prison."What you are do­ing is steal­ing from the coun­try's trea­sure," said Ch­agua­nas mag­is­trate Bra­manand Dubay as he sen­tenced Ken­ny Rat­tan, 43.Rat­tan will serve on­ly a month as the mag­is­trate or­dered the sen­tences to run con­cur­rent­ly.Rat­tan, an oys­ter ven­dor, and his 15-year-old rel­a­tive, a con­struc­tion work­er, plead­ed guilty to 18 counts of pos­ses­sion of the car­cass of a pro­tect­ed an­i­mal.

Rat­tan, the teenag­er and their cousin, who es­caped cus­tody, were ar­rest­ed on Sun­day at Ship­ping Road Ex­ten­sion, Fe­lic­i­ty.Court pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Michael Jack­man said around 11 am game war­den Richard Ram­lo­gan and oth­er of­fi­cers were on foot pa­trol near the man­grove for­est when he saw the two ac­cused and an­oth­er man.The men were car­ry­ing black bags and wear­ing mud­dy cloth­ing.The 15-year-old was hold­ing a pel­let gun.

Ram­lo­gan found the 18 car­cass­es in Rat­tan's knap­sack.The 15-year-old boy had two nets in a black plas­tic bag and the third man had a black plas­tic bag with red cloth.When Ram­lo­gan told them of the of­fence they had com­mit­ted, Rat­tan said: "Boss, we went to catch crab."Jack­man said Ram­lo­gan, who had 13 years' ex­pe­ri­ence, was able to iden­ti­fy the bird by the necks of the car­cass­es. Red feath­ers were al­so found in a knap­sack. Jack­man said the third sus­pect es­caped.

In ask­ing for a non-cus­to­di­al sen­tence, at­tor­ney Tara­dath Singh said Rat­tan, the fa­ther of four and grand­fa­ther of three, and the teenag­er went to the swamp to catch oys­ters. He said they did not cap­ture the birds but met their cousin, who had the car­cass­es, and de­cid­ed to help him with the bags.Singh said the gun al­so be­longed to their cousin.Rat­tan has a pre­vi­ous con­vic­tion for co­caine pos­ses­sion.

The mag­is­trate said: "This is an of­fence against T&T. The scar­let ibis is our na­tion­al bird. It is not like you are hunt­ing an agouti and Gan­ga Singh (En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter) has closed the hunt­ing sea­son. You ought not to be hunt­ing in the first place."He said such an of­fence war­rant­ed a cus­to­di­al sen­tence."If every­body go to hunt down Scar­let Ibis, what our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren will see?

"Tourists come to see them. They are sup­posed to be a na­tion­al trea­sure. What you are do­ing is steal­ing the coun­try's trea­sure," the mag­is­trate added.He or­dered the ri­fle to be for­feit­ed by the State and the oth­er items to be dis­posed of by the chief game war­den.The mag­is­trate al­so asked for a pro­ba­tion of­fi­cer's re­port on the teenag­er and re­leased him on $10,000 bail with his moth­er as sure­ty.He will reap­pear on No­vem­ber 1.