Selling of wild meat in closed season slammed

THE public selling of wild meat during the closed hunting season at folk fairs, church and school bazaars and what is the State doing about it was one of the questions put to the Chief Game Warden Anthony Ramnarine and the head of Wildlife Section Nadra Nathai-Gyan by a member of the audience at the recent Hunters in Partnership with Conservationists Symposium. Chairman of the recently held symposium Buddie Miller told Sunday Newsday this was one of the questions raised. The venue for the conference was the Rudranath Capildeo ?Learning Centre, McBean, Couva. Neither the Public Utilities and Environment Minister Pennelope Beckles nor any game wardens attended the symposium.

“Wild meat is still being sold publicly and it’s difficult for a game warden to go into the middle of the savannah, with thousands of people there eating their wild meat and say I’m going to arrest two or three fellas,” Miller complained. Miller also said wild meat is sold at public functions under the patronage of government ministers. He said Dr Reeza Mohammed, speaking on behalf of the National Gas Company (NGC) and the National Energy Company (NEC), gave a comprehensive presentation on the destruction by bulldozers of hundreds of hectacres of forests to lay the new cross country gas pipelines from Beach Field, Guyaguayare to Point Fortin. “Dr Mohammed focused his presentation,” revealed Miller, “on the reforestation work being done to reforest those devastated areas, and I am talking about several hundred acres of destroyed forests, taking into account the Union Estate and the cross country pipelines.”

Miller said Dr Mohammed spoke of the replanting exercise being done by the two energy corporations which involved the replanting of hardwood and fruit trees. “However, audience member Ramkissoon Ramsaran,” stated Miller, “wanted to know what about the wildlife that was destroyed in bulldozing and running those pipelines through the forests. You’re talking about 75 kilometres of pipeline and road access through the forest and that thousands upon thousands of animals, like the lappe, tatoo and agouti, would have been buried and crushed flat in their burrows when those bulldozers came over. So, the question was that if NGC was replanting trees, then who was seeing about restocking the animals and who was seeing about setting up a nursery to breed those wild animals destroyed in this exercise?”

Miller said Dr Mohammed’s reply was that the Certificate of Environmental Clearance (CEC) issued to the energy corporations by the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) required that studies be done on the fauna in the affected area. “Now, I don’t know how a study,” he noted, “is going to help a dead lappe and a dead tatoo and you are talking about thousands of them. Mohammed also made the comment that animals were free to flee but that would apply to the deer and the wild hog which are surface animals, fleet of foot and will run from a threat. And even then, they were badly, badly traumatised because a lot of them panicked with the extent of the devastation and ran into people’s homes, yards and gardens. “People were running down and chopping animals and having big wild meat parties. Wild animals were running disoriented, panicked and scared towards the sea because they did not know where to go.” Miller said that there has been no adequate response from NGC, NEC or the EMA.