The White-faced Whistling Tree Duck be­came lo­cal­ly ex­tir­pat­ed in Trinidad in the 1930s. Sev­er­al years ago the Pointe-a-Pierre Wild­fowl Trust start­ed the breed­ing of this beau­ti­ful and use­ful species of wild duck as well as oth­er en­dan­gered wa­ter­fowl and wet­land birds.

These love­ly lit­tle ducks are noc­tur­nal and though very qui­et dur­ing the day, roost­ing in trees, they may be­come very ac­tive in the ear­ly evening; feed­ing, mat­ing and breed­ing at this time. They are help­ful to farm­ers, as these gen­tle birds feed on the seeds of wild grass­es, bee­tles and aquat­ic lar­vae.

The trust, ded­i­cat­ed to the pro­tec­tion, breed­ing and study of T&T’s wet­land birds, as well as to En­vi­ron­men­tal Ed­u­ca­tion and Pub­lic Aware­ness, re­ceived sev­er­al of these birds, “our birds” from abroad and have bred and re­leased them in­to the wild in Trinidad. They usu­al­ly breed at one year of age, be­tween April and late Sep­tem­ber and have strong pair bonds. Both Par­ents rear their young and pair bonds seem per­ma­nent.

"It can­not be re­it­er­at­ed too of­ten that the ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness of the pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly of our chil­dren is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant, for as one school­child ques­tioned, 'Why do you both­er to put them back when peo­ple are on­ly go­ing to kill them again?' 'Good Ques­tion!' An­swer: 'First so that hope­ful­ly some will es­cape and en­sure the sur­vival of the species so that when you grow up there will be some left for you to know about and pro­tect. Sec­ond­ly, that is one of the rea­sons for this dis­cus­sion so that your gen­er­a­tion will know bet­ter and en­force our laws," the trust said.

"Ed­u­ca­tion, un­der­stand­ing, aware­ness, awak­en­ing of the youth, our peo­ple of to­mor­row, fu­ture hunters and cor­po­rate ex­ec­u­tives, who will al­so be en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists and well-ad­just­ed hu­man be­ings with a sense of bal­ance, recog­nis­ing that mankind with the need for so­cial progress and in­dus­try al­so recog­nis­es the se­ri­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ties con­cern­ing his nat­ur­al sur­round­ings and that OUR OWN SUR­VIVAL DE­PENDS ON WHAT WE DO NOW."