Shot ocelot clings to life after surgery

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

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An ocelot is fight­ing for sur­vival af­ter be­ing shot and left with se­vere spinal in­juries, in what of­fi­cials are de­scrib­ing as a se­ri­ous breach of the coun­try’s en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion laws.

The an­i­mal, now named Pa­paoutai, un­der­went emer­gency surgery af­ter X-rays re­vealed bal­lis­tic trau­ma to his spine.

While his con­di­tion re­mains crit­i­cal, vet­eri­nar­i­an Dr Kriyaan Singh, who has been car­ing for him since he was re­trieved from a forest­ed area, says there is cau­tious op­ti­mism.

Pa­paoutai is be­ing kept at the La Ro­maine Vet­eri­nary Clin­ic in South Trinidad.

“He is cur­rent­ly what we would con­sid­er para­pare­sis. Even though he can­not vol­un­tar­i­ly stand up on his hind legs, he does have some vol­un­tary move­ment. He al­so has good deep and light pain sen­sa­tion. That tells us that while there is spinal trau­ma, it is not a com­plete sev­er­ing of the spinal cord,” Singh said of the an­i­mal’s cur­rent con­di­tion.

That dis­tinc­tion, he ex­plained, gives the an­i­mal a favourable prog­no­sis but he said the full ex­tent of the in­jury will on­ly be known af­ter a CT scan sched­uled for Fri­day.

Game war­den Steve Per­sad con­tact­ed Singh af­ter re­ceiv­ing video footage of the ocelot in dis­tress in the Ce­dros-Granville for­est on Sun­day.

By the time the an­i­mal ar­rived at the vet­eri­nary fa­cil­i­ty sev­er­al hours lat­er, he was se­vere­ly de­hy­drat­ed, in shock and show­ing lim­it­ed mo­bil­i­ty. A punc­ture wound be­neath the neck ini­tial­ly ap­peared to be as­so­ci­at­ed with por­cu­pine quills found around the in­jury site. How­ev­er, the size and depth of the wound raised sus­pi­cion.

“With our ex­pe­ri­ence, we sus­pect­ed a gun­shot wound,” Dr Singh said.

Ra­di­ographs con­firmed the last two cer­vi­cal ver­te­brae and the first three tho­racic ver­te­brae showed dam­age caused by a bal­lis­tic frag­ment. Emer­gency surgery was im­me­di­ate­ly per­formed to re­move the bul­let.

Since the pro­ce­dure, Pa­paoutai has shown signs of im­prove­ment. How­ev­er, Singh said the CT scan will pro­vide cru­cial 3D imag­ing to de­ter­mine whether ad­di­tion­al frag­ments re­main and if fur­ther sur­gi­cal in­ter­ven­tion is pos­si­ble.

“If the CT scan is not favourable, we may have to con­sid­er eu­thana­sia. But we are hop­ing for a full re­cov­ery,” Singh said, adding the species is en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive and an im­por­tant part of the na­tion’s bio­di­ver­si­ty.

He was blunt in his as­sess­ment of the shoot­er.

“I don’t want to call this per­son a hunter. A hunter hunts for food or liveli­hood. This was not that. I pre­fer to call them a poach­er,” he said.

Based on the re­cov­ered frag­ment, Singh sus­pects the an­i­mal may have been shot with a hand­gun, pos­si­bly a nine-mil­lime­tre round.

Singh said this was the fourth re­port­ed shoot­ing of an ocelot so far this year, not­ing the pre­vi­ous three were al­ready dead by the time they were found.

“I’ve had 40 ocelots here over the years. The first three that were shot didn’t make it. We are hop­ing Pa­paoutai will be the one who pulls through.”

In a state­ment, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries ac­knowl­edged the in­ci­dent and con­firmed that the ocelot is an En­vi­ron­men­tal­ly Sen­si­tive Species (ESS) pro­tect­ed un­der the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act.

The min­istry said the ocelot has full pro­tec­tion from hunt­ing, harm or dis­tur­bance, adding the species plays a cru­cial role in main­tain­ing eco­log­i­cal bal­ance in Trinidad and To­ba­go by reg­u­lat­ing prey pop­u­la­tions.

“Any act that jeop­ar­dis­es the life or well-be­ing of an ESS not on­ly un­der­mines na­tion­al con­ser­va­tion ob­jec­tives but al­so con­tra­venes the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act,” the state­ment said, not­ing that vi­o­la­tions car­ry a fine of TT$100,000 and up to two years’ im­pris­on­ment.