Trinidad: Zoo blames kangaroo’s death on fireworks

(Trinidad Guardian) The de­bate over a ban on fire­works raged yes­ter­day af­ter a young male Red Kan­ga­roo at the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo died from “trau­ma and stress” it ex­pe­ri­enced af­ter the In­de­pen­dence Day fire­works in the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Pres­i­dent of the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ZSTT), Gupte Lutch­me­di­al, con­firmed that necrop­sy re­sults showed the kan­ga­roo died as a re­sult of trau­mat­ic stress brought on by loud ex­plo­sions from last Sat­ur­day’s fire­works show.

 
The 18-month-old kan­ga­roo that died on­ly ar­rived in the coun­try three weeks ago from Texas.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the zoo yes­ter­day, Lutch­me­di­al said the kan­ga­roo died at 10.30 yes­ter­day morn­ing.

“By 12 o’clock we had the vets here….we asked both of them to come. The necrop­sy or au­top­sy, whichev­er one you want to call it, was fin­ished about half an hour ago (around 2.oo pm) and it did con­firm it (the kan­ga­roo) died from trau­ma and stress – bleed­ing of the brain. It’s the noise that got them ex­cit­ed and had them beat­ing around the place,” he said.

Lutch­me­di­al said the noise from the fire­works was loud­er than any of the zookeep­ers ex­pe­ri­enced in past years of the In­de­pen­dence Day fire­works dis­play.

He said the ex­plo­sions were loud­er be­cause the show was moved clos­er to their lo­ca­tion around the sa­van­nah.

The kan­ga­roos were not the on­ly vic­tims of the noise as Lutch­me­di­al said six birds were found dead on Sun­day.

The Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo made a call for the ban­ning of fire­works when the news of the kan­ga­roo’s death was an­nounced yes­ter­day via its Face­book page.

How­ev­er, Lutch­me­di­al does not be­lieve such an ex­treme ap­proach is need­ed.

He sug­gest­ed that the fire­works can be moved from the cur­rent venue to the fore­shore and be launched from a barge.

“I know peo­ple en­joy fire­works. There are safer fire­works that you can have or a next lo­ca­tion,” he said.

In a state­ment is­sued af­ter the kan­ga­roo’s death yes­ter­day, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency said it rec­om­mends “as an al­ter­na­tive” the im­por­ta­tion of noise­less fire­works.

“This will pro­vide a so­lu­tion to the noise pol­lu­tion and dis­com­fort to an­i­mals and cit­i­zens,” the EMA said.

It cit­ed Sec­tion 2.03 of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy, ap­proved by Cab­i­net in 2018, which states that it is Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy that “noise from all sources will be man­aged to en­sure that the health and well-be­ing of all cit­i­zens will be re­spect­ed.”

Guardian Me­dia first learned of the ef­fects of the fire­works on the zoo’s an­i­mals on Mon­day, af­ter Lutch­me­di­al con­firmed zookeep­ers had dis­cov­ered six dead birds on Sun­day morn­ing. Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Fire­One Fire­works An­dre Abra­ham, whose com­pa­ny pro­vid­ed the py­rotech­nics, as­sured on Mon­day that this year’s dis­play was done in the same GPS-con­firmed lo­ca­tion as pre­vi­ous years.

He sug­gest­ed the dif­fer­ence in vol­ume could have re­sult­ed from us­ing a mix of prod­ucts from a new sup­pli­er and old­er prod­ucts.

Abra­ham was un­able to con­firm whether or not the deci­bel lev­el of the show was loud­er than pre­vi­ous years, but he said the EMA gave Fire­One Fire­works the req­ui­site clear­ance for the py­rotech­nics show.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, our so­ci­ety is very neg­a­tive­ly dri­ven. We like to talk about all the neg­a­tive things but there are so many peo­ple who en­joy the fire­works – it brought fam­i­lies to­geth­er,” he said.

Since the zoo made ini­tial com­plaints over the week­end about the noise, Abra­ham said he has been try­ing to get in touch with Lutch­me­di­al but was un­able to reach him.

The in­de­pen­dence fire­works show­case was spon­sored by Ansa McAl, which in a re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia said: “The in­for­ma­tion com­ing out of the zoo, that the death of one of the kan­ga­roos was a re­sult of the fire­works, is cer­tain­ly cause for con­cern and re­quires a gen­er­al dis­cus­sion, not just about fire­works but about how we ac­ti­vate cel­e­bra­tions such as Car­ni­val, in and around the city of Port of Spain and in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Ansa McAl added, “In­de­pen­dence fire­works have been around for over 50 years in Trinidad and To­ba­go and is tra­di­tion­al­ly a gift to the peo­ple of this na­tion. All per­mis­sions were giv­en by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to Fire­One Fire­works to ex­e­cute in Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah and San Fer­nan­do Hill on In­de­pen­dence night. The cel­e­bra­tions were ad­ver­tised, well in ad­vance, through­out tra­di­tion­al and so­cial me­dia.”

Mem­bers of the pub­lic have been weigh­ing in on the is­sue.

One Face­book user said: “So for the last decade or more there has been fire­works dis­play in the city with NO an­i­mal deaths at the zoo. All of a sud­den in 2019 Kan­ga­roos died due to noise lev­els, very in­ter­est­ing. Seems like some­one is try­ing to us­ing the un­for­tu­nate deaths of these an­i­mals for their own agen­da smh (shake my head).”

An­oth­er said: “The zoo needs to be re­lo­cat­ed. They are try­ing their best to bring in new at­trac­tions but with very lim­it­ed space. But for the time be­ing the fire­works should be re­lo­cat­ed.”

Both Fire­One Fire­works and Ansa Mcal said they are open to meet­ing with Lutch­me­di­al and his team to bet­ter un­der­stand their con­cerns and work on a so­lu­tion.