Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The landown­er ini­tial­ly be­lieved to be at the cen­tre of the re­cent de­struc­tion of a sec­tion of the tur­tle nest­ing site at Tur­tle Beach, says he had noth­ing to do with it as he no longer owns the land.

Speak­ing un­der con­di­tion of anonymi­ty yes­ter­day, the man showed Guardian Me­dia doc­u­ments to prove he sold the land last No­vem­ber. Now, he is claim­ing he is be­ing un­fair­ly tar­get­ed by au­thor­i­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to the man, 11 years ago the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) used an ex­ca­va­tor to cut through the land, which he made clear was pri­vate prop­er­ty. He claimed he sub­se­quent­ly ap­proached both the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the cur­rent THA ad­min­is­tra­tion ask­ing that they redi­rect a riv­er that was pass­ing through his land, and he even­tu­al­ly spent $109,000 to fill the land back up.

“The mo­ment I start to full it back, I’m the worst per­son in the world,” the man told Guardian Me­dia in a brief in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

He main­tained that the land is no longer his and that he had a bill of sale to prove it, though he said no one had asked him for it while they were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the de­struc­tion of the nest­ing site.

In fact, the man claimed the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency (EMA) po­lice even at­tempt­ed to ar­rest him in con­nec­tion with the mat­ter just last week. In a video shown to Guardian Me­dia, the for­mer landown­er was seen be­ing cor­nered by four of­fi­cials.

He said, “They sur­round­ed me like hye­nas…threat­en­ing to lock me up.”

He said he was dis­ap­point­ed in the way the mat­ter was be­ing hand­ed.

“I would have been open to talk­ing to the EMA be­fore but the way they han­dled it, I’m not in­ter­est­ed.”

He said soon af­ter the new own­er pur­chased the land, they be­gan work on the prop­er­ty for this up­com­ing rainy sea­son.

The for­mer landown­er said it’s not un­usu­al for the riv­er mouth to be opened, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the rainy sea­son, to al­low the ravine to flow in­to the sea so that it doesn’t back up and set­tle in the com­mu­ni­ty. He al­so claimed he ap­proached the area rep­re­sen­ta­tive and vil­lage coun­cil to re­quest that they clean the riv­er course last Jan­u­ary, but they said they had no funds to do so.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he al­leged that Sec­re­tary for Food Se­cu­ri­ty, Nat­ur­al Re­sources, the En­vi­ron­ment and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Nathisha Charles-Pan­tin was un­will­ing to meet with him to deal with the is­sue at hand.

Charles-Pan­tin could not be reached for com­ment. But in an in­ter­view on a morn­ing show last week, she said the THA has been in con­ver­sa­tion with the own­er for over a year and the THA had asked the EMA to in­ter­vene.

The EMA said they did in­ter­vene af­ter the Black Rock Vil­lage Coun­cil made a re­port. How­ev­er, the THA said it was un­aware of the mat­ter last Sep­tem­ber.

De­spite the ac­cu­sa­tions, the for­mer landown­er in­sists that the ex­ca­va­tion work was not car­ried out on state lands, but rather on the prop­er­ty he pre­vi­ous­ly owned.

Two week­ends ago, a video went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia show­ing crushed tur­tle eggs on the beach­front af­ter ap­par­ent con­struc­tion work had been done on the site. In the video, the per­son film­ing ac­cused the land own­er of de­stroy­ing hun­dreds of tur­tle eggs af­ter heavy equip­ment was used to do the de­vel­op­ment work.

Soon af­ter, the EMA and To­ba­go po­lice launched in­ves­ti­ga­tors in­to the mat­ter.

EMA CEO Hay­den Ro­mano could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.