The two-year moratorium on hunting expired with a bang. Photographs on Facebook suggest that hunters are trying to make up for lost time and money. There were pictures of young men with their arms draped in iguanas.
Particularly distressing was a photograph of what appeared to be the rarely seen tamandua.
The tamandua or "matapel" is the larger of the two anteater species found in this country. And there it was, a "protected species" ...dead.
Since that picture surfaced, other brag-worthy snapshots have gone into circulation; hunters' macabre displays of their prodigious kills. While the authenticity of Facebook photos can be difficult to verify, anyone could have predicted a massacre at the expiration of the moratorium.
This measure, pushed through by the previous administration, sprang out of fears of drastically declining wildlife populations. At the time, hunters noisily rubbished the claims.
They argued that game species are plentiful. Is it really shocking that earnest pleas by the Agriculture Minister Clarence Rambharat to "not overhunt animals" were ignored by the poacher wearing the iguana poncho at the side of the road?
Pressed on the matter shortly after having changed the drapes at the Ministry, Mr Rambharat is quoted as saying this government has no immediate intention of extending the moratorium because there is still insufficient data on wildlife populations. This fact alone, to my mind, is fair grounds for extension of the moratorium. Mr Rambharat questioned the efficacy of an ongoing, EMA-led survey, echoing misgivings ventilated by the hunters.
But we've been here before. In 2009, I wrote about the ambivalence of the Patrick Manning-led administration towards the environment and wildlife. During the PP administration I wrote extensively on the value of our wildlife resources both in ecological and economic terms.
A 2013 column suggested that a comprehensive species survey should run parallel with the proposed moratorium.
In 2015, with a change of government, I have come to accept that nothing has changed at all.
In fairness to Mr Rambharat, it was the former Prime Minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who happily announced the impending end of the moratorium on the elections platform.
The former Prime Minister's courtship of hunters was a sad, last gasp of a foundering administration hoping to curry favour with hunters who are determined to curry-flavour everything that moves in the bush.
The results of surveys, preliminary or otherwise, are not readily available. It is difficult to say what researchers have been able to uncover about the state of our wildlife populations.
However, hunting and its harmful effects should not be debated in isolation. Environmentally-sensitive species across the country also face threats from free-for-all illegal quarrying, the illegal pet trade, annual conflagration of the forests, fragmentation due to industrial development and housing, and the list goes on.
Another underestimated threat is the staggering ignorance of the population about the animals protected by law. One would have thought the opening of the hunting season would have been marked by newspaper advertisements reminding gun-toting marauders of protected species.
We continue to pay lip service to eco-tourism as a pathway to economic diversification, all the while handing out licenses to hunters to shoot down our futures.
There seems to be no appetite for the establishment of interim measures to aggressively restrict the number the animals hunters are allowed to harvest. The current system that requires hunters to register their kills with the Forestry Division at the close of the hunting season is innately inadequate.
In civilised societies there are bag limits, hunters are allowed to harvest a specified number of animals and this number varies from one species to another.
Additionally, the duration of the hunting season in some American states differs among species. Our hunting season is six months and game wardens are stretched laughably beyond their limits.
I've always favoured a permanent ban on hunting because wildlife is more valuable to the economy alive than dead. I would even accept, albeit grudgingly, a compromise of sport hunting governed by strict enforcement of the laws meant to save protected species.
Eco-tourism can empower communities, supporting entrepreneurship and building sustainable local economies and that...is political kryptonite. The idea of a citizen independent of the state is anathema to the very nature of our politics. How do you keep voters on the hook if they have the power of self-determination?
It is the unfortunate truth of all administrations that the bottom-up development offered by eco-tourism doesn't carry the same cache of mega projects that get corporate T&T salivating.
While everyone one is keen to give this early government the benefit of the doubt, history makes me doubt our wildlife will benefit.