FOR lack of legal basis and merit, the Cebu City Prosecutors Office dismissed the case filed by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) against three former Cebu Normal University biology students and their professors for killing eight Black Shama (Copsychus cebuensis) birds for research.
Assistant city prosecutor Mary Ann Castro, in her ruling, stated that killing and destroying wildlife is per se unlawful but there is an exception to the rule and that is if the killing and destruction of a wildlife is done according to an authorized research or experiment.
The DENR Protected Area and Wildlife Division (PAWD) represented by Ariel Rica filed a case for violation of Republic Act 9147 or the law on wildlife protection against former CNU biology students Ninokay Beceril, Elrich Sydney Barinque and Ephem Jun Fernandez as well as their thesis adviser Edward Lawrence of the CNU Biology Department, CNU teachers Nimfa Pnasit and Joezen Coralles and University of San Carlos professor Richard Parilla. The students already graduated in March 2014.
The PAWD issued a wildlife gratuitous permit to the respondents in relation to the research for their thesis titled “Diet and Preference of Cebu Black Shama in Cebu Island.”
Rica alleged that the respondents knowingly, willfully and unlawfully committed violations in the provisions stipulated in the wildlife gratuitous permit by killing and dissecting eight Black Shama, locally known as Siloy, which are endemic or native to Cebu, and found in dwindling forest patches.
But Castro said dissecting a Black Shama is not killing or destroying it. She explained that in the Webster Dictionary, killing means the intent to end and terminate a living thing or to slaughter for food.
On the other hand, dissecting means compliance of school academic requirements and not to consume or eat.
“Ergo, the CNU respondents have a legitimate purpose in dissecting a Black Shama, not for food but for academic purpose,” the ruling stated.
The plaintiff also admitted in the reply affidavit that the research done was legitimate.
Castro also said that the plaintiff stressed that what the CNU students and panelists violated was the gratuitous permit “and gratuitous permit is not the law.”
Granting that they violated the permit, this does not make the respondents criminally liable as the nature of the offense is administrative.
“Clearly, from the foregoing law provision which herein plaintiff claimed to have been violated by respondents – CNU students and panelists, there was no violation being committed under RA 9147,” Castro said in her ruling.
She also stressed that Parilla was included as respondent but the complaint filed never mentioned of his involvement in the research.
Black shama has been classified as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).