Wildlife Smuggling in Trinidad: Understanding the Damage It Does

In the illegal wildlife trade, delicate ecosystems are disrupted and even destroyed. In today's world we are faced with many environmental disasters and climate change. Our future and very well-being depends on maintaining and improving every bit of the environment we have, and in order to do that we must first preserve the ecosystems so that the environment at large can survive. The harmful removal of these animals not only harm the animals themselves, submitting them to torture and inhumane conditions, but, it will lead to our own demise as well.

In Trinidad, we see many smuggled animals. Commonly, poachers smuggle in animals such as tufted capuchin monkeys, parrots, macaws, sloths and even jaguars and ocelots. These animals are kept in deplorable, cramped and unsanitary conditions where many never even survive the trip. With parrots and macaws, trees are cut down indiscriminately to retrieve the birds from the nests, furthering the deforestation and destruction of their habitat and the environment. The mothers of monkeys are fiercely murdered in the poacher's efforts to get the babies, not only taking that one baby from the wild, but ending the family altogether.

But who is to blame? The poachers? Yes, they do carry a part of the burden, but they aren't the main part of the problem. Where there is demand, there will be a supply. Our fellow citizens in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago are the problem. By creating the demand for these animals, poachers have a market and a reason to continue destroying the lives of many innocent animals, and the lives of our future generations.

Even monkeys, as cute and tiny as they are, will eventually grow up into a monkey that most people aren't prepared to or capable of keeping. These monkeys are often released or simply get away from their incapable captors and venture into our forests where they establish troops and invade our ecosystems. They then compete with our local species for food and habitat, continuing the destruction to our ecosystem.

As we are experiencing a pandemic over the COVID-19 virus, while these animals are smuggled into our very own country every day, we open ourselves to risks of other diseases and the potential introduction of viruses and parasites.

Wildlife smuggling is a very prevalent issue in today's world, not only in Trinidad but across the world where its effects destroys species, even driving them to extinction and destroying our world along with it. It destroys lives, the wildlife, and it will destroy our own.