Trinidad: Stray cats at Caroni Bird Sanctuary poisoned

(Trinidad Guardian) Just one week af­ter com­plaints were raised about cats in­vad­ing the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary, dis­turb­ing pho­tos have sur­faced on so­cial me­dia show­ing the an­i­mals dead from ap­par­ent poi­son­ing at the same site.

The pho­tos were post­ed on Wednes­day night by the An­i­mal Wel­fare Net­work (AWN) on their Face­book ac­count.

 
Last week, while dis­cussing the de­plorable con­di­tions of the Ca­roni Vis­i­tor Cen­tre in a Guardian Me­dia in­ter­view, sev­er­al stake­hold­ers com­plained about stray cats liv­ing at the site. 

“Re­cent­ly, the top­ic of cats at the Ca­roni Bird

Sanc­tu­ary has been trend­ing lo­cal­ly. It seems that some­one took it up­on them­selves to poi­son the cats,” AWN wrote.

The ac­com­pa­ny­ing pho­tos showed at least ten dead cats and the corpse of one bird.

De­scrib­ing the act of poi­son­ing the an­i­mals as “ab­solute­ly in­hu­mane,” AWN al­so point­ed out the dan­gers of us­ing poi­son at a bird sanc­tu­ary.

“It is ex­treme­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble and the resid­ual ef­fects are dan­ger­ous. An­i­mals such as caiman and vul­tures who feed on these poi­soned car­cass­es are at risk of be­ing poi­soned as well.

The Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary is a thriv­ing ecosys­tem and pro­tect­ed area. It is the home of the Scar­let Ibis and 20 en­dan­gered species. To use poi­son on the grounds of the sanc­tu­ary is a crim­i­nal act.”