The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), through its Bio­di­ver­si­ty Team, in­stalled four new sea tur­tle nest­ing signs along Man­zanil­la Beach.

This ini­tia­tive forms part of the on­go­ing ef­forts of the Na­tion­al Sea Tur­tle Task Force (NST­TF), led by the EMA, to en­hance pub­lic aware­ness and pro­mote the pro­tec­tion of crit­i­cal nest­ing habi­tats.

Man­zanil­la Beach is a vi­tal nest­ing ground for the leatherback tur­tle—one of five species of sea tur­tles that nest in Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing the an­nu­al nest­ing sea­son, which runs from March to Au­gust. All five species are des­ig­nat­ed as En­vi­ron­men­tal­ly Sen­si­tive Species (ESS) by the EMA.

The beach al­so falls with­in the Nar­i­va Swamp Man­aged Re­source Pro­tect­ed Area, a na­tion­al­ly des­ig­nat­ed En­vi­ron­men­tal­ly Sen­si­tive Area (ESA).

The in­stal­la­tion of the signs was made pos­si­ble through com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ships. The Man­zanil­la Wildlife Watch and En­vi­ron­men­tal Group and the Nar­i­va En­vi­ron­men­tal Trust played key roles in iden­ti­fy­ing ap­pro­pri­ate lo­ca­tions for the sig­nage. In­stal­la­tion was sup­port­ed by the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SGRC), which pro­vid­ed labour and lo­gis­ti­cal as­sis­tance.

The SGRC al­so serves on the Man­age­ment Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (MAC) for ES­Ss and ESAs, sup­port­ing the EMA in the pro­tec­tion of the coun­try’s most at-risk species and habi­tats.

The EMA con­tin­ues to re­mind the pub­lic that the preser­va­tion of sen­si­tive habi­tats is crit­i­cal dur­ing the tur­tle nest­ing sea­son. Unau­tho­rised ac­tiv­i­ties that harm the en­vi­ron­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in­volv­ing ES­Ss or with­in ESAs, are sub­ject to en­force­ment un­der Sec­tion 70(2) of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act, Chap­ter 35:05 (the Act).

The Act states: “Any per­son who know­ing­ly or reck­less­ly un­der­takes or con­spires to al­low any ac­tiv­i­ty in an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive area or with re­spect to an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive species des­ig­nat­ed un­der Sec­tion 41, which may have an ad­verse im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment with­in such area or on such species, com­mits an of­fence.”

The Act pro­vides a fine of $100,000 and two years of im­pris­on­ment for con­tra­ven­tion of this sec­tion.