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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Unique Conservation Program Leads to Samoan Rainforest Preservation

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

May 5, 1995

OVERVIEW & SOURCE

Following is Radio Australia's "One World" program's account of

the native Samoan environmental movement to protect forests and

coral reefs. It was posted in econet's reg.pacific conference.

For further information on EcoNet membership, a nonprofit online

system, send any message to <econet-info@igc.apc.org>.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

/** reg.pacific: 101.0 **/

** Topic: OW:The Preservation of forests and **

** Written 5:07 PM May 3, 1995 by peg:roz in cdp:reg.pacific **

From: Frances Green - Radio Australia <roz>

Subject: OW: The Preservation of forests and coral areas and also

how Australians help fund a rain forest education centre in

Savai'i.

One World

An environmental awareness programme for the pacific produced by

Carolyn Court. Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Radio

Australia International Service)

COURT: The focus is on Western Samoa. I'll be speaking

with on of two chiefs who have shared in an environment prize for

work preserving rainforests and coral areas, we'll hear how

Australian donations are helping to fund a rainforest education

centre on the island of Savai'i.

MUSIC

COX: "We walked into the logging companies with the

villagers in tow. They cheered when we paid the loggers off. It

was really a great, great moment in my life. The villagers then

entered a covenant with the donors to protect the forest as a

reserve for 55 years and establish one of the world's first

indigenous controlled reserves, rainforest reserves. The

villagers, owned, and administered and managed the Fale'alupo

forest reserve."

COURT: A few years ago I spoke with Professor Paul Cox, a

botanist who's based with the Brigham Young University in Utah.

He'd been working on the medicinal properties of plants and

forests near the village of Fale'alupo, the western most village

in Western Samoa on the island of Savai'i. The forests that

Professor Cox was exploring was one of two remaining low land

rain forests areas on Savai'i that had not been logged. In 1989

when villagers decided that they would have to sell their forests

in order to pay for a school, Professor Cox decided to mortgage

his family's home in the States in order to help the villagers pay

for a school while not having to clear fell their forests. The

logging company as you've just heard were paid off and the

villagers kept their sacred forest areas. Since that time, the

village and the forests have been buffeted by two cyclones, but

fortunately the forest is regenerating. One of the chiefs who was

instrumental in helping to stop the logging has won the Seacology

Award for indigenous conservation efforts. And donations from

Australians has helped to pay for a rainforest information centre

and other initiatives. Professor Paul Cox spoke with me from Utah

about the Seacology Award, the way that the Australian donations

have been spent and what's happened to the forests since these

cyclones.

COX: Since that time we've been tracking the regrowth

of the forest and the amazing thing is that the forest is coming

back. I was just there for a few weeks ago and its amazing how

much the forest leafed out, how much growth is coming back and it

shows that forests can survive even terrible natural calamities,

but they can't survive logging.

COURT: I believe that some of the chiefs there have actually won

some sort of award.

COX: Yes, we started a foundation in the United States

called the Seacology Foundation because we felt that there was not

enough conservation efforts being given to island eco systems, so

we sponsor the preservation of island eco systems and island

cultures, both in the South Pacific and in the Caribbean. And one

of the things we do is that once a year we recognise an indigenous

conservationist. We fly them up to America, we give them a medal

and a thousand dollar cash award and this year the awardee was

Chef Fuiono Senio from Fale'alupo village. He's one of the chiefs

who actually ran and stood in front of the bulldozers and he's

been absolutely indefatigable in protecting the forest. And it

was pretty exciting to have him up here. He'd never been up in

the northern hemisphere before and when he landed at Salt Lake

airport, 'course Utah is an area of desert bordered by mountains,

he looked at the desert and he turned to me and said in Samoan

"good heavens, the loggers have already been here." I had to

explain to him that, this was the way it looked, its always

looked, it's desert, but it was interesting to me that he would

associate desert with the aftermath of logging. But it was just

tremendous to have him up here and I think it was important to

recognise these indigenous people who with very little support in

their own countries do so marvellous a job in protecting the

conservation and in fact if your listeners know of indigenous

people worthy of the award, I'll be delighted to hear from them

and perhaps they could forward nominations to me via your

station.

COURT: Now, there was also a film shown about this particular

situation in Fale'alupo and Australian viewers would have seen

that. There has been some follow-up from that too. Perhaps you

could explain what's happened

there.

COX: It was interesting, when the forest has been

logged, we just happened to have a film crew out there from

Australia. Paul Tait and Jenny Kendall working with Scandia

nature films in Sweden, were doing a documentary film on my

investigation of medicinal plants. And when the forest started

getting ripped down, they kept the cameras rolling and came up

with this film called the Triangle of Life. It was broadcast by

the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, an hour long television

documentary and it was broadcast in Australia even though there is

no solicitation for funds in the film, Australian viewers were so

moved that they contributed a total of 17,000 Australian dollars

to the village of Fale'alupo to help with the forest. Those funds

were sent to the Australian Conservation Foundation and I would

like to make a little report on the usage of those funds if

possible. The village, the Australian Conservation Foundation and

Seacology felt that the funds could best be used to build the

system of trail networks throughout the rainforests preserve and

to build a rainforest conservation centre and information centre

in Fale'alupo. When I approached the village, they said that

they'd be delighted to build the conservation centre as well as

the trails but they asked that all the funds that could be of use

to pay any sort of salary be used instead to pay off the mortgage

on the school, and so this is the third time the school has been

built because it has been blown down twice by hurricanes and now

the mortgage was paid off in January due to the generosity of the

Australian people. So I am very grateful as is the village with

this tremendous assistance and I hope that many of your listeners

will take time to visit Fale'alupo if they are in Samoa and see

the new rainforest information centre. We are also building now,

with the village an aerial rainforest canopy walkway, we hope to

finish that this year and it will look like something like the

walkway in Lamington National Park, Queensland.

COURT: Paul, could you just describe the people that actually won

the award. Who are they?

COX: Yes, well this year the award was shared by two

Samoan Chiefs, Chief Fuiono Senio, from Fale'alupo village and one

of the few women in Samoa to hold the Chief's title, Va'arsilifiti

Moelagi Jackson. Chief Fuiono Senio is the paramount talking chief

in Fale'alupo village and he was the one who actually ran up eight

miles and barricaded himself in front of the bulldozers to protect

the forest when the loggers came back after the hurricane and

offered to pay the village for downed timber he looked at them and

said "we would rather allow ourselves and our children to starve

than to have you damage our forests' and said 'if they ever

returned again, the loggers, they would become the dust of the

earth.' So a real hero. When he gave his lecture here in the

United States, he introduced himself as the guardian of the

rainforest in fact a student asked him what he thought about

western technology and he said, "I think it's terrible I see a

bulldozer and chainsaws and all they do is destroy the things that

I love and hold sacred." The other winner was Chief Moelagi

Jackson. She is owner of the Safua Hotel in Samoa and organiser

and founder of one of the world's first indigenous conservation

societies. Fa'asau Savai'i which means Savai'i conservation. She

now has had 50 villages join the society and the entrance fee is

establishing a village reserve, either of coral reef or

rainforests. So suddenly there has been a patchwork quilt of 50

rainforest reserves come up, spring up in Savai'i and one of the

logging companies who was so frustrated by this that they left

the island for ever. So a tremendous woman and tremendous hero,

highly regarded by the Samoans.

COURT: Professor Paul Cox from Brigham Young University Utah in

the United States. Va'asilifiti Moelagi jackson, the chief that

Professor Cox just mentioned has been working for about 20 years

to conserve Savai'i environment as well as trying to help people

find alternative ways of funding their community services and

building needs. The Savai'i's Conservation Society that she

helped start carried out many work shops with villages on

handicrafts, tree planting and environmental issues. Moelagi

Jackson talks about the motivation for her and the Seacology

Environment Award that she won this year.

JACKSON: Well, the Seacology Award came by because you know

some of their people who had been around here doing their

research, you know like Paul and Thomas, I had given them all the

assistance and to me who had been working on the island for the

last 20 years trying to preserve as much of our culture and our

tradition and because I truly believe that our land has a lot to

do with it, especially the rainforest, if the rainforest go, so

our language and our culture will also go. So it was true, my own

struggle to preserve as much as of our island that I came by the

Seacology and they are for me God's given gift. You know who had

linked us to the outside funding agencies who had already helped,

you know to fund some of our projects. Since I started a hotel, I

think that was how I came by to get exposed to the problems that

might, our island was facing and I think because I am already a

titled woman on this island, I was so pleased that I was able to

have access to some of the villagers to advise them of their

rights and to try and help them to make up decisions, but you

know, it was very difficult. The loggers had money, I did not

have the money.

COURT: Logging has been one of your main concerns, then.

JACKSON: Yes, our main concern and it was the

logging that also is some of these roads is going over some of the

sacred sites and is covering some of the fishing and the mangrove,

because of the road towards the logging. And because the island

is one of the very last developed among the Pacific Islands.

Certainly, when people find out about our hard wood and iron wood,

very, very good wood, suddenly we are in the peoples interest,

everyone is here with cheque books. So it was very difficult, so

I guess this is how the Seacology had found out how I had been

trying to advise people, you know, going around villages

organising meetings and trying as much to lure some of the, some

of the chiefs who are working with me had been very good, because

now they agree with what I'm trying to do and they are also some

of my men, marketing people who are going around the villages and

some, especially the areas where some of these forests had

been ear-marked, you know to be preserved. They are working there

to try and change village decisions and we are having a big

overall, the whole island tree planting campaign which is not only

to replace what we had lost during the cyclone but also as an

awareness of itself.

COURT: So this is part of the work of your conservation

society.

JACKSON: Yes, our main. We have got four main

projects which we are pushing at the moment. Awareness and

education project. We are making presentations in villages and

schools about handicrafts, you know trying to generate income into

the villages using whatever they could extract from their

environment without hurting the rainforest and our ecotourism, you

know trying to make groups stay in villages for three or four days

exposing themselves in the culture so that the people know that

the culture is so important to them. You know the presence of

tourists in some of these villages make the villagers realise how

their incoming tourists had highly liked it and how they are very

interested in our own culture and traditions, that there's no need

for us to change and in that way the people in the village they

really revive some of the things that we had neglected or that we

had taken for granted and the other one is our tree planting. So

these are our four main projects that had been going quite well

and we are trying to get as more, as more people to join in and

more villages to join in.

COURT: Do you feel that you're achieving something?

JACKSON: Of course, we are, we are very very happy

with the progress. It is very difficult, like two or three years

ago, with the government, you know some of the projects that they

do, like road building without consulting us. So we stood up to

some of their projects, they have to change in part, they ignored

us sometimes. But I think we had made our mark and I think they

had respected us by it and I think you know we are now known. I

think that's the main point, that the government now are aware,

the people are aware that we are here and that we are pushing, we

are working.

COURT: Western Samoan Chief, Va'asilifiti Moelagi Jackson.

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