Fish from the Arnavon Island Marine Reserve, Solomon Islands

by The Nature Conservancy

Partners:

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Ministry of Forests and Environmental Conservation (MFEC) Arnavon Islands Management Committee

Success Stories

One story involves the continued productive cooperation of the members of the Management Committee. Management Committee meetings were held in November 1995, and April and September 1996. Issues concerning the balance of conservation in the area and the desires of the communities were brought up, discussed, and voted on. The next meeting will take place in November 1996.

A second story concerns the Management Committee's unsolicited expression of a desire to raise funds themselves to help finance the day-to-day activities of the AMCA. This step is setting the tone for not only self-reliance in their conservation efforts, but is also demonstrating a firm belief that this is their project and not just another aid hand-out.

A third story is about the pending adoption of the AMCA regulation regarding sea turtle hunting into the Solomon Islands National Legislation. This is significant in that it responds to the question of "What is this project doing to help the Solomons as a nation?" Turtles are an endangered species and to preserve the biodiversity of a nation is to promote wealth of their natural resources.

Challenges

During the construction of the staff houses of the fisheries center in Waghena, there was a serious misconception regarding the "ownership" of the project. This, as with many problems that have come up, is attributable to lack of communication. The TNC Project Manager held a meeting recently with the Waghena Community, and the position of center manager was announced as open to members of the Waghena Community only. It was later learned that this seemingly minor detail went a long way in convincing the Waghena people that this, like the Conservation Area, is indeed their project.

In the early stages of the AMCA project, the greatest challenge was getting the elders and chiefs of the three very diverse communities to sit and work collectively and with cooperation and compromise. Now they are a strong team and even talk about forming a smaller emissary group within themselves to go to neighboring communities and give advice on starting similar community-based conservation projects there. The next few years to come will most likely hold the greatest challenges in the development of a successful fisheries project. The history of fisheries projects in the South Pacific is full of examples of failures, but this project has a few things going for it that no other project ever had: 1) strong cooperation between all partners involved and 2) a shining success in Kia to model the other two centers from. The challenges look tough, but the future of this project looks bright.

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