The Forest Department is currently pursuing the tourists who chased, harassed, and petted a wild jaguar cub in Mountain Pine Ridge over the weekend. So far, they have not found the men involved, Victor and Ruben Stoll. They searched for them up North yesterday but did not meet them. They were reported to have gone birding but authorities could not find them at 'La Milpa' where the investigation led them.
And while the tourists have deleted their post on Facebook, the disturbing video is still sparking outrage.
However, if the men are caught, the penalty for that crime would be a simple $500 fine. Minister of Sustainable Development, Orlando Habet, told us that they are working to modernize the legislation to increase that fine.
In the meantime though, the Stolls caused major distress to both a mother jaguar and her young cub. When we spoke to the executive director at the Belize Zoo, he said that human interference with wildlife can cause a plethora of problems.
Celso Poot, Executive Director, The Belize Zoo
"I believe that wildlife should never be approached, they should never be handled simply to show that you had this experience. Wildlife should be observed from a distance and they should be allowed to continue with their natural behavior. So obviously it was of great concern to me about the animal welfare."
"Predators like jaguars, prey like tapirs, what they do is they try to protect their young by masking any unnatural scent so that any other predator would not detect them. So by human handling a wild cat, a wild jaguar, or a wild tapir, you put your scent on them and you expose them to other prey because somehow the parents are able to mask and you only smell the jaguar scent and you smell the jaguar and you know a predator is around and so you won't go near."
"Another concern is we estimate that cub to be like between two weeks to four weeks and so it's at a very vulnerable stage in its life, it's still developing so its immune system is still weak, and there's a lot of other concerns that you don't see just from handling the jaguar or looking at the video, the concerns like I said overall is just the welfare of the animal."
"Most people think that to hunt means to kill, the Wildlife Protection Act clearly defines hunting or to hunt to mean to take, to kill or molest by any method. So hunting is not just you going out and killing the animal and bringing it back in."
And while Poot pointed out that he does not have the authority to deem whether a crime was committed, he explained that education is the way to encourage both tourists and locals to protect wildlife.
Courtney Menzies:
"There must be a level of anger, frustration that these tourists, who are hunters, they have pictures of the majestic animals that they have felled in other countries, they come into a country like ours, they come into our reserve, our forests, and they just do what they want. They're acting entitled in a country that's not theirs. There must be some level of frustration."
Celso Poot:
"If you watch international news, just over the weekend, someone in the Yellowstone approached a bison and the bison had its way with that person so everywhere you go, people will act in contravention to the law, in contravention to what is expected and what we in Belize need to do is educate our public, educate our people and we need to engage with visitors coming to Belize, we need to have these signs that wildlife should not be molested, that it's the law. We have these signs in the zoo, do not harass, molest, and it's because it's the law."
We have reached out to the Forestry Department for comment but up to newstime-had not gotten a response.
