Following our article last week, about the illegal capture and attempted butchering of a protected green turtle; The Leewards Times has received multiple enquiries seeking more information, from readers right across the social spectrum. The main question on everybody’s mind is “Why was this fisherman not charged with both the illegal taking and the completely senseless cruelty to a protected species?” I regret that the answer to this question is less than satisfactory.

I contacted Kimberley Stewart, Director of the St Kitts Sea Turtle Monitoring Network, and she gave me this explanation: “The fisherman was not charged.  The St. Pauls police force felt that since the fisherman allowed us to remove the turtle from his premises and cooperated with our rescue efforts that he should not be charged.  The turtle he took was an adult female that had come up on the beach to nest.  Nesting sea turtles are protected year round from harvest, per St. Kitts laws. The Fisheries Department has not provided us with information regarding the follow up on their side.”

The woeful failure to prosecute this individual to the fullest extent that the law allows sets a worrying precedent. Are our police force to be allowed to pick and choose which laws they enforce and which they just let slide? The sad fact is that, between the end of February and the beginning of October, all adult turtles in the open sea are legally fair game for the unscrupulous, even the highly protected green turtles. There are no quotas restricting the harvest and according to Kimberley, about 60 mature turtles were reported as taken this year and many, many more were taken and not reported.

The positive work in turtle conservation, in which many people are engaged in St Kitts & Nevis, is an important part of SKN’s credentials as bona fide eco-tourist destination. If we permit people to blatantly infringe against the already-weak legislation with impunity, we are in serious danger of being ‘exposed’ by the conservationists, as being somewhere that ‘talks the talk’, but most definitely does not ‘walk the walk’. If such an accusation reaches a wider international audience, we can kiss a whole load of tourist dollars goodbye.