/* Written 5:07 PM May 3, 1995 by roz in peg:reg.pacific */
/* ---------- "OW:The Preservation of forests and " ---------- */
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
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.