LEE AN­NA MA­HARAJ

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Zookeep­ers at the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo in Port-of-Spain have claimed that they were not giv­en of­fi­cial no­tice that a grand fire­works dis­play would take place at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on In­de­pen­dence Day.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia anony­mous­ly, one zookeep­er said mem­bers of staff on­ly found out about the dis­play on Thurs­day morn­ing.

“On­ly on the morn­ing of In­de­pen­dence Day, when the staff saw the fire­works be­ing set up did, we know for sure that this was hap­pen­ing,” he said.  “How could no pri­or no­tice be giv­en? Isn’t an event like this sup­posed to be put out for pub­lic no­tice? Or do the rules and/or com­mon cour­tesy just not ap­ply any­more?”

Guardian Me­dia can con­firm that Fire One Fire­works, who puts on the dis­play, did place a no­tice on so­cial me­dia warn­ing of the im­pend­ing fire­works in three lo­ca­tions—Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do and Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah in Tacarigua. How­ev­er, it is un­clear if there were any dis­cus­sions pri­or to this an­nounce­ment.

De­spite the short no­tice, the Zookeep­er said mem­bers of staff were able to pull to­geth­er and sta­tion them­selves at dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the Zoo, al­though he said this did not do much as the an­i­mals were ex­treme­ly start­ed by the nois­es.

"It was a bit scary for me to see the an­i­mals pan­ick­ing and not be­ing able to es­cape the noise. Many an­i­mals were mov­ing about fran­ti­cal­ly and bang­ing in­to parts of their cages,” he ad­mit­ted.

“I saw the gi­raffe, the im­pala, and the ze­bra all gal­lop in fright. The rac­coons were be­hav­ing hys­ter­i­cal­ly, run­ning back and forth, prac­ti­cal­ly bounc­ing off the sides of the cage. One of the kan­ga­roos hid next to a zookeep­er and would not leave her side, while the oth­er kan­ga­roo hopped up and down the length of their cage. The lla­ma stood to­geth­er in their herd with their zookeep­er and kept look­ing at him as though to ask what they should do or to have him com­fort them,” he said.

The zookeep­er added:

“The fly­ing fox­es, which some may know as peace­ful fruit bats, were any­thing but peace­ful.  These poor an­i­mals at­tempt­ed to fly to safe­ty and as a re­sult banged them­selves mul­ti­ple times on the fenc­ing. I felt most sor­ry for the flamin­gos, as they bore the brunt of the noise com­ing at them. The birds hud­dled to­geth­er in their pond and were pac­ing in a cir­cle, try­ing to find safe­ty. All of the small­er birds were beat­en up in their cages, as they all at­tempt­ed to es­cape the noise by fly­ing.  We are still as­sess­ing in­juries to these an­i­mals,”.

The Zookeep­er said they are most con­cerned about the in­juries some of the birds sus­tained, and if they do not die im­me­di­ate­ly, they may die lat­er on.

Speak­ing on be­half of oth­er zookeep­ers, he re­vealed that they felt help­less and as though the au­thor­i­ties did not care about the Zoo. 

The ma­jor In­de­pen­dence Day fire­works dis­plays took place on Thurs­day 31st Au­gust, around 8 pm at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain, the Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah in Tacarigua, and the San Fer­nan­do Hill, San Fer­nan­do. 

On Fri­day, Founder of An­i­mals 360 Foun­da­tion and the Fire­works Ac­tion Coali­tion of T&T, Roger Mar­shall, called on au­thor­i­ties to do bet­ter than to con­tin­ue the grand fire­works dis­play at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. He said al­though there were few­er com­plaints com­ing out of res­i­den­tial ar­eas this time around, their ma­jor con­cern is the harm­ful ef­fects on an­i­mals at the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo. 

Mar­shall al­so called on the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Regi­nald Ar­mour, to speed up the process to get the Fire­works Bill passed.