Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

One hunter be­lieves that the pres­ence of US naval ships in the Caribbean wa­ters can as­sist in curb­ing the smug­gling of il­le­gal wildlife in­to T&T.

Re­nal­do Ra­goonaths­ingh, who is af­fil­i­at­ed with var­i­ous hunt­ing groups, made the com­ment as he, along with scores of hunters, turned up at the Forestry Di­vi­sion in San Fer­nan­do, on Fri­day, to pur­chase State Game Li­cences ahead of the Oc­to­ber 1 open­ing of the hunt­ing sea­son.

Ra­goonaths­ingh be­lieves the height­ened at­ten­tion caused by the US-Venezuela con­flict might di­min­ish the num­ber of ves­sels with il­le­gal car­go, in­clud­ing an­i­mals for con­sump­tion, in­to the coun­try. He said this would give le­git­i­mate hunters who hunt to earn an ex­tra dol­lar a fair chance this sea­son.

“Christ­mas right around the cor­ner. Every­body looks for­ward to get­ting their lo­cal wild meat and this year, with the in­ter­ven­tions on our coast­lines, you have more guar­an­tee and sure­ty that the meats that you are get­ting from a lot of the hunters would be lo­cal,” he said.

An­oth­er hunter, Ker­land Sa­landy, who has been hunt­ing since he was 12 years old, ad­vised in­ex­pe­ri­enced hunters to be care­ful when han­dling firearms to avoid ac­ci­dents.

“Be care­ful. We have to look out for dan­ger­ous snakes, trap guns,” he cau­tioned.

Hunter Jack Ram­nar­ine com­plained about ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a lengthy wait at the Forestry Di­vi­sion and hav­ing to pay with cash rather than with his card. A hunter for over 50 years, Ram­nar­ine said trap guns were usu­al­ly set by poach­ers, but they would sel­dom en­counter trap guns dur­ing the open sea­son. Each li­cence costs $100 per game species, with a lim­it of three li­cences per hunter. The hunt­ing sea­son will run from Oc­to­ber 1 to Feb­ru­ary 28, 2026.

Ac­cord­ing to the Con­ser­va­tion of Wildlife Act, Chap­ter 67:01, State Game Li­cences al­low hold­ers to hunt the species spec­i­fied on their li­cence on State lands and for­est re­serves. Hunt­ing and pos­ses­sion of igua­nas will be pro­hib­it­ed from Jan­u­ary to March. Hunt­ing of igua­nas must cease on De­cem­ber 31, 2025, and a fine of $10,000 ap­plies for vi­o­la­tions. Hunt­ing of lizards is al­so not per­mit­ted with­in the mu­nic­i­pal bound­aries of Port-of-Spain un­der Le­gal No­tice No. 280 of 2019. Hunters have un­til March 31, 2026, to dis­pose of game car­cass­es, ex­cept igua­nas, which must be dis­posed of by De­cem­ber 31, 2025.