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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Palo Seco cautious of jaguar roaming community

by

624 days ago
20230605

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Some share scep­ti­cism, while oth­ers are ex­cit­ed by ru­mours of a jaguar sight­ing in their com­mu­ni­ty.

How­ev­er, there is a fear among res­i­dents of No4 Road, Pa­lo Seco, that a large fe­line roams the forest­ed ar­eas around their homes. Res­i­dents claim the an­i­mal was re­lax­ing near a pump­ing jack sev­er­al kilo­me­tres in­side the vil­lage last week. How­ev­er, on­ly two peo­ple saw it. So­cial me­dia was abuzz over the week­end when some­one post­ed that smug­glers lost an adult jaguar in Pa­lo Seco. South West­ern Di­vi­sion pa­trolled the vil­lage this morn­ing on the look­out for the jaguar.

Afisha La Motte said al­though she has to see the jaguar to be­lieve there is one near her home, she keeps her chil­dren close. La Motte said a neigh­bour spot­ted a “large cat” less than 100 me­tres from her home. Her hus­band, who hunts, saw a large cat re­cent­ly but could not de­ter­mine the species as it was night, and it fled when they chased it. 

“About four days ago, the neigh­bour came, telling us about the cat in the area and to keep those chil­dren in­side be­cause it is a big one. About two days ago, for­est rangers came back ask­ing about it,” La Motte said.

With many Venezue­lan mi­grants en­ter­ing Trinidad through the area, La Motte said it was pos­si­ble that smug­glers al­so brought ex­ot­ic an­i­mals through the south coast. She said while there were ocelots and oth­er fe­lines around, none were the size de­scribed by her neigh­bour.

There­fore, she keeps her five chil­dren, ages one month to 16 years, in her sight once they are home.

“I am not let­ting them out there. They usu­al­ly walk up the road and play. I stopped them from do­ing that.”

Ram­di­al Kat­wa­roo heard about a jaguar loose in the com­mu­ni­ty but had not seen it. Kat­wa­roo said he does not be­lieve there is one and that peo­ple may have seen a large fe­line.

He said his fam­i­ly stays in­side most times. His dogs are usu­al­ly in the ken­nels, and the cats re­main in the house. But if there is in­deed a jaguar and he comes across it, he says, “Well, I do not know what I would do at that time be­cause they are fast. We can­not out­run them.”

He told Guardian Me­dia there were claims that the jaguar at­tacked a goat and dog. How­ev­er, he has not seen it. The news team trav­elled to Christi­na Alphon­so’s home, near the Pa­lo Seco Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, to meet Lucy, the dog al­leged­ly at­tacked. Alphon­so said they fed Lucy last Wednes­day af­ter­noon, and when they checked her Thurs­day, they saw an in­jury on her back. She said that Lucy was al­ways in her ken­nel and noth­ing hap­pened be­fore. Alphon­so said af­ter peo­ple learned of Lucy’s in­jury, they as­sumed it was a jaguar at­tack. How­ev­er, she does not know what hap­pened.

While peo­ple take cau­tion, Lin­ton Boland walks the road freely. He be­lieves there is a “tiger cat”, say­ing his neigh­bour saw it and there was no rea­son to lie. How­ev­er, he said if he lives in fear, he will not be able to go home.

“Well, the guy who lives not too far said he saw it when he came down. It was lay­ing down, tak­ing re­lax­ation,” Boland said.

Mean­while, Game War­dens said there was no ev­i­dence that a jaguar is roam­ing the vil­lage.

“We need con­fir­ma­tion. Right now, it is just hearsay. The habi­tat range for jaguars is 100 square kilo­me­tres so that can be from here to ohio­ho.”

They ex­plained that a jaguar is the third largest cat, with an adult mea­sur­ing five to sev­en feet long. They are al­so stealth hunters, mean­ing they am­bush their prey and are so strong that they can kill large an­i­mals and climb a tree with them. There­fore, a dog and goat would not sur­vive an at­tack.

So far, no one re­port­ed the sight­ings to au­thor­i­ties. If there are re­ports, the war­dens will try to cap­ture it, al­though they have no train­ing in hunt­ing those kinds of preda­tors.

In a state­ment over the week­end, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries (MALF) said it was aware of the con­tents of a video on so­cial me­dia on the re­port­ed sight­ing of an ex­ot­ic an­i­mal in south Trinidad.

“The Forestry Di­vi­sion of MALF can­not con­firm the ve­rac­i­ty of the claims made in the re­port. Of­fi­cials are pur­su­ing all leads at this time and will con­tin­ue to keep the pub­lic abreast of their find­ings.”


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