Dear Editor,
I wish to correct the misinformation stated in a letter appearing in the Sunday Stabroek of September 28 about the slaughtering of wild animals. The letter and photo of a puma gave the impression that this was a recent incident. The facts are that this photograph was taken nearly two years ago on a goat farm in the Ituni Savannahs where jaguars and pumas including this one had reduced the flock of goats from nearly one thousand to just about four hundred now. This could be verified by Dr Austin of the Guyana Livestock Development Authority. The cats are still roaming free on the farm killing at will. Many cage traps were set to catch the predators alive but without any success. We asked the authorities for permission to purchase tranquilliser guns so that we could catch these large cats and transfer them out of the area, but no one seems to know how to go about it. We were not successful in obtaining one. We do not shoot animals indiscriminately; many animals which we caught alive were donated to the zoo. We are as conservative as the writer of that letter.
Another thing is that the author of the letter referred to the animal as a pregnant female. The cat in the photograph is a male. He was shot with a shotgun. The meat was given to some Chinese friends of ours. The meat is considered a delicacy by them. (I could supply you with the names if needed.) Jaguars and pumas continue to this date to wreak havoc with mostly goats on the farm and the numbers keep dwindling. Cows are also reared on the farm, but because of their size, kills by these large cats are kept to a minimum.
I would like to inform you that a herd of Boer goats – a special breed of goats some weighing between 100 and 150 pounds – were imported from the USA at a cost of millions of dollars. These were crossed with local goats to improve their size and get them suited to the local conditions. We have been selling prize rams and ewes to farmers all over the country in order to improve the local breed. You could check this out with Guyana Livestock Development Authority.
In this country, people shoot jaguars which kill their farm animals. This is considered good news; hardly anyone complains about this even though jaguars are an endangered species all over the world. I wonder what agenda the author of the letter in your newspaper has for campaigning so bitterly about a puma shot nearly two years ago under the same circumstances. It should be noted that pumas are being hunted legally to this day even in the USA.
Yours faithfully,
A Persaud
