Agouti turns out to be pest to farmers’ food crops
Had it been open season, it would have been ‘gouti and pumpkin on the plate for some. As it happened, there was only what was left of the pumpkin. The ‘gouti had already eaten its share and disappeared.This column was called out to cover four such cases over the past week. One in Tabaquite, others in Paria and Lalaja, and this one in Lopinot.
On the San Juan Estate in the heights of La Pastora, Lopinot, Cyril Cooper has planted fields of mixed species. Besides cocoa, coffee and citrus, he has planted patches of pumpkin and root crops.
In May of this year, he started his pumpkin patch and looked forward to reaping healthy bearings around this time. However this turned out to be the beginning of a series of serious losses for him.
“When I went up the hill to reap at least one pumpkin to cook, I saw the havoc that the agouti had done. This was not just one agouti but quite a few. You could see the big teeth marks where they skinned the pumpkin to get at the seeds.”
Cooper estimates that he lost over one thousand pounds in pumpkin in just one week. His pumpkin patch is now almost totally eaten out. Where the agouti has left remnants of the pumpkin on the ground, water is now collecting in them and hastening the rotting process.
The agouti is an herbivore and one of our most populous species of wild animal. It feeds during the daytime and is considered to be a pest by farmers. Now that there has been a moratorium on hunting, many reports of an agouti invasion are coming in.
Cooper complains that the agouti has not only destroyed his pumpkin, but also his cassava, yam, tania, cush-cush and corn.
“They dig holes and eat out all the cassava. One stool of cassava usually yields about fifteen pounds. They dug out and ate most of the stools. They are eating the head of the yam too. When you look up you see the vine drying down.
The agouti is getting bolder and eating everything. They are attacking the lower cocoa pods on the trees to get at the seeds. They are reaching up at the corn and pulling it down to eat. Corn is one of their favourite foods so what they cannot reach, they cut down the tree to get it. They also destroyed my sweet peppers to get at the seeds.”
Cooper related the story about the chataigne.
“One morning at about nine o’clock we heard the chataigne fall to the ground. The tree is just about twenty feet away from the house. We left home and came back about five o’clock in the afternoon. When we went to pick up the chataigne, we found that the agouti had eaten the whole thing and as if to add insult to injury, the agouti left only one seed for us. We still keep the seed to remember this incident.
They also eat the breadfruit when it falls to the ground. It is hard for us because now we are not even getting our own food to cook and eat. In all of my 40 plus years on the estate, I have never experienced a situation like this.”
Most farmers in the area are suffering similar losses and Cooper thinks that this is because there is a shortage of food in the forest.
“There is a lack of seeds that our wildlife feeds on. People are cutting down bearing forest trees to plant garden and build houses. The agouti is now behaving worse than the squirrel. Just like the squirrel, the agouti is now also destroying farmers’ crops.
I think that farmers on private lands should call for the agouti to be classified as an agricultural pest just like the squirrel, mongoose and manicou. You put in all your hard labour and you are not getting the returns because of the widespread damage to your crops.
I understand that the animals have to eat too but this is reaching way out of proportion. I think that the Minister of Food Production should meet with the farmers who are facing this situation to work out how best to solve this problem.
What I would like to suggest is that farmers be given some sort of stipend to actually plant seed bearing trees in the forest. This would reverse the present shortage of forest food and stop the invasion of our food crops out here. This would be a win-win solution both for the agouti as well as the farmers.”
Copied from the Trinidad Express Newspaper website: www.trinidadexpress.com
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