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Neither British colonists nor Christian missionaries nor government entities could tamp down conflicts among tribes in this remote South Pacific island nation. But when turtles started disappearing, the local people finally started talking.
Text and Photos by Djuna Ivereigh
With the homing instincts of a sea turtle, Rence Zama steered his canoe some six miles over moonless waters, stole ashore at the Arnavon Islands, strode up to a government-run field station and burned it to the ground. It was the early 1980s, and the field station—really just a handful of palm-thatched huts—had been recently built by the Solomon Islands government as the nerve center of a nature sanctuary to protect hawksbill turtles.
The Solomon Islands, a remote Pacific archipelago strung southeast of Papua New Guinea, are probably best known as the site of the World War II Battle of Guadalcanal. But they also contain some of the world’s most important nesting grounds for hawksbills. On these beaches, the turtles haul their 150-pound bodies out of the surf and bury hundreds of thousands of eggs in the crushed-coral sand. For the hatchlings that survive, this becomes their hard-wired home, the place to which they’ll return to lay their own eggs.
Worldwide, hawksbill turtles are endangered. Even so, throughout the Solomons, as with most Pacific islands, turtle eggs and meat have been dietary staples since before anyone can remember. And hawksbills, a source of tortoiseshell, have been particularly prized by hunters. In the 1980s, the turtles here were on the brink of extinction.
Nelson Bako, Zama’s cousin, remembers the conversation that inspired Rence’s act of arson. At the time, Bako worked at the government-run sanctuary, but he didn’t feel right chasing people off the islands. Neither man felt the government had involved local communities in decision making that directly affected their subsistence-based livelihoods. And each was angry with the government about the way employment decisions were made. “When [government officials] started this project, we continued to ask them to involve us, but [they] did not like us to join,” says Bako, who left his job over a personnel dispute. So Bako and Zama, both in their 20s at the time, decided to “make the government change its view,” he says. “I told Rence just to burn up the project. … Rence always appreciates any hard thing you give to him.”
Zama was arrested and spent two and a half years in prison for the crime, missing the birth of his first child.
Today, it’s a tale gleefully recounted by members of the Arnavons Community Conservation Area Management Committee, including Zama himself. “I feel I do the right thing,” he says, standing in a new field station that he helped build at the scene of the 25-year-old crime.
The Arnavons Community Marine Conservation Area—encompassing 40,000 acres, three small uninhabited islands, flourishing reefs, fish-filled lagoons and beaches that are home to thousands of egg-bearing turtles—is run by an improbable cast of characters. A band of reformed arsonists, poachers and unreformed turtle eaters has teamed up with the Solomon Islands government and The Nature Conservancy to reimagine conservation around their own worldview. At the heart of the project are three communities on Choi-seul, Santa Isabel and Waghena islands—a mix of tribes and cultures who argued over the use of the neighboring Arnavon Islands until agreeing on no use.
The fire Zama set was a pivotal moment in the islands’ fraught history, the moment when the communities put aside their resentments of each other and united to reassert their traditional claim to the Arnavons’ natural resources. “That was the real turning point, when the government knew we were not frightened of going to prison,” says Bako. It recognized “what I stand for,” says Zama. “That’s why I manage this project today.”
The government also realized that if it wanted to protect turtles, it had to find another way. So even though the Arnavons are still technically government lands, “the government now tacitly recognizes the traditional claims,” says Peter Thomas, who directs the Conservancy’s work in the Pacific Islands. And he gives much credit to the government for the success of the Arnavons conservation area. “The government has been a full partner in this project from the outset, and without its support, none of this may have been possible.”
This is the first community-run marine protected area in the South Pacific. Now going on 12 years, the project is showing that well-managed protected areas promote healthy communities of turtles and other marine life and also improve the lives of human communities. And a recent anonymous gift to the Conservancy has completed an endowment that will provide sustainable financing for the project—a first for a marine protected area (see Nature Conservancy, autumn 2007, “Milestones”). Says Zama, “It’s up to the three of us [communities] now.”
To fully appreciate the significance of this peaceful arrangement, it helps to understand the violent history that serves as its backdrop.
Nature picture credits: All photos © Djuna Ivereigh; Map © Dan Marsiglio
