RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

T&T’s forests are be­ing bull­dozed by un­scrupu­lous quar­ry op­er­a­tors, min­ers, slash-and-burn farm­ers, and squat­ters and the State seems pow­er­less to stop it.

With the Forestry Di­vi­sion se­vere­ly un­der­staffed, de­for­esta­tion has now reached cri­sis lev­els and had es­ca­lat­ed even more since the lock­down of COVID-19.

 Many foresters are afraid to stand up against the armed crim­i­nals who chop down the valu­able forests for wood, fer­tile soil or var­i­ous types of quar­ried ma­te­r­i­al.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Con­ser­va­tor of Forests Den­ny Dipchans­ingh re­vealed that the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion needs to fill over six­ty va­can­cies of Foresters and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 game war­dens. 

“More staff ob­vi­ous­ly will have in­creased man­pow­er to curb these il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties. How­ev­er, the present staff must be com­mend­ed for their ef­forts,” Dipchans­ingh said.

 As pub­lic of­fi­cers, he said foresters are bound­ed by an 8 am to 4.15 pm work­day and they are not en­ti­tled to over­time nor ad­di­tion­al al­lowances.

He al­so said there has been an in­crease in de­for­esta­tion.

Ear­li­er this month when forestry of­fi­cers re­turned to work af­ter the COVID-19 lock­down, they dis­cov­ered that 25 hectares of the Ec­clesville Wind­belt Re­serve in Rio Claro were ploughed down by rogue farm­ers to plant crops. 

Dipchans­ingh ex­plained that the wind belt re­serve in Rio Claro, which com­pris­es a to­tal of 515 hectares, was des­ig­nat­ed to pro­tect sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties against storms and hur­ri­canes. Over the years, how­ev­er, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150 hectares have been bull­dozed by il­le­gal farm­ers.

There has al­so been the de­struc­tion of 300 hectares of forests re­serve in Table­land with­in re­cent times.

Asked what is be­ing done to curb the ram­pant in­crease in de­for­esta­tion, Dipchans­ingh said, “We have in­creased pa­trols out­side of the nor­mal work­ing hours to pre­vent fur­ther en­croach­ment and have got­ten as­sis­tance from the TTPS on pa­trols. We would be li­ais­ing with the Land Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion and a more vig­or­ous ap­proach will be im­ple­ment­ed with the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands to evict these il­le­gal squat­ters.”

With re­gard to en­croach­ment by farm­ers on the na­tion’s forests, Dipchans­ingh said they have start­ed ed­u­cat­ing farm­ers on the dan­gers of cut­ting down the for­est’s trees.

“A plan of ac­tion will be im­ple­ment­ed us­ing a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry ap­proach with the farm­ers, with re­spect to en­force­ment and ed­u­ca­tion,” he added.

Say­ing there were 36 for­est re­serves in T&T with a to­tal area of 119,056.82 hectares, Dipchans­ingh said, “By stan­dard in­ter­na­tion­al cri­te­ria, T&T has about 48 per cent for­est cov­er.”

 How­ev­er, he said sev­er­al ar­eas is­land­wide have been de­stroyed based on post-in­de­pen­dence com­par­isons of for­est cov­er maps.

He said the Forestry Di­vi­sion fo­cus­es its ef­forts on the pro­tec­tion of the For­est Re­serves. 

“It should be not­ed that not all the ar­eas are to­tal­ly cleared of for­est cov­er as sec­ondary forests have grown over aban­doned squat­ted lands and Forestry Di­vi­sion has re­plant­ed some of these ar­eas over the years. Our work pro­gramme en­tails re­plant­i­ng at least 100 hectares per year,” he added.

He not­ed that for­est of­fi­cers had no au­thor­i­ty to evict il­le­gal squat­ters.  

“For­est of­fi­cers are em­pow­ered un­der the Forests, Sawmills and Con­ser­va­tion of Wildlife Acts. The Con­ser­va­tor of Forests does not have the au­thor­i­ty to evict il­le­gal oc­cu­pants or squat­ters. Present­ly this Au­thor­i­ty lies on­ly with the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands,” he said.

He added, “ Our charges re­late on­ly to the above-stat­ed Acts and of­fend­ers in these cas­es can on­ly be charged for il­le­gal­ly cut­ting trees. Over the years sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als have been fined vary­ing $5000 -$25000 for il­le­gal cut­ting.  In the most re­cent case, an in­di­vid­ual was bought be­fore the Courts for il­le­gal­ly cut­ting in the Matu­ra For­est Re­serve and was giv­en a one year bond to keep the peace.”

Kristo­pher Rat­tans­ingh, chair­man of the Wildlife and En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (WEPTT)  ear­li­er this month ap­pealed to the au­thor­i­ties to equip the Forestry Di­vi­sion with the nec­es­sary re­sources to save the forests and wildlife.

Based on a re­port pub­lished by mongabay.com, T&T has some 678 known species of am­phib­ians, birds, mam­mals and rep­tiles ac­cord­ing to fig­ures from the World Con­ser­va­tion Mon­i­tor­ing Cen­tre. Of these, 2.2 per cent are en­dem­ic, mean­ing they ex­ist in no oth­er coun­try, and 2.5 per cent are threat­ened. T&T is home to at least 2259 species of vas­cu­lar plants, of which 10.4 per cent are en­dem­ic. 

The var­i­ous for­est land clas­si­fi­ca­tion in T&T are:

       Nat­ur­al Forests

       For­est Plan­ta­tions

       Oth­er Wood­ed Lands

       Grass­lands

       For­est Wet­lands