The Project
Volunteer with Turtles and Community Development in Vanuatu

Despite the traditional controls on turtle use in many Pacific countries, the last 50 to 100 years have seen a marked increase in the killing of all age classes of turtles for their eggs, shells and meat. Hawksbill turtle populations are severely depleted and as a result have been listed as a critically endangered species by the IUCN.

In 1995 Wan Smolbag, with funding from the UK Department for International Development, conducted a research and theatre project in response to the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme’s (SPREP) Year of the Turtle Campaign. The result of this play was the creation of a network of village volunteers, named turtle monitors, that continues today. The initial group of monitors, from the island of Efate, instigated bans on the killing of turtles and the taking of eggs. The Efate monitors were keen to share the results of their work in villages around the country and SPREP and WWF provided funding through the late 90s and early 2000s for this to happen.

Over the past 10 years, the network has evolved and grown. Where the original monitors concentrated their efforts on turtles, the Vanua-Tai (of land and sea) resource monitors, work with a range of species. That small network of monitors from Efate Island is still growing, and today boasts more than 300 monitors representing communities in all six provinces of the country.

One of the communities involved in the Vanua-Tai network is the village of Tasiriki, located on the island of Moso. The information previously provided by the resource monitors in this area suggests that this may be a nationally significant area for Hawksbill turtles. The reefs surrounding the island appear to be a year-round feeding ground for this species, and there are kilometres of isolated beaches on the west side of the island that see many Hawksbill and Green turtles nesting on them each year.

While the monitors in this area believe that there are large numbers of turtles nesting on these beaches they simply do not have the time or manpower to effectively walk the beach to count nests, much less conduct a proper nesting survey as well as protect the nests from predators.