CONSERVATION AREA LIVE LINK A newsletter for Conservation Areas in the Pacific Issue no 3 July–September 1999 ISSN 1562-4935 CONTENTS Why is monitoring an important management tool? The impacts of the Funafuti Conservation Area on local biodiversity and the community 1 Why is monitoring an important management Claudia Ludescher Biodiversity Officer, Funafuti Conservation Area Project tool? The impacts of the Funafuti Conservation Area on local The Funafuti Conservation Area (FCA) encompasses six of the atoll’s 36 islets biodiversity and the and surrounding reefs, channels, lagoon and ocean terrace habitat on the west- community ern side of Funafuti atoll in Tuvalu. Claudia Ludescher This project aims to conserve the marine and terrestrial biodiversity of Funafuti 4 Profiting from natural atoll based on the sustainable use of natural resources for the benefit of the resources community and their descendants. 5 Conservation Area Summaries The area is around 33 square kilometres in size and Aim of the Funafuti Conservation Area 8 Training in community- includes 20 per cent of Funafuti’s reefs and 40 per Project based natural resource cent of the atoll’s tropical broadleaf woodland. Lo- To conserve the marine and terrestrial biodiversity management planning cally significant populations of sea birds, coconut of Funafuti atoll based on the sustainable use of crabs, reef fish and clams use or inhabit this area. 9 Naturewalks into the natural resources for the benefit of the community Takitumu Conservation Although no people live inside the CA (15 kilome- and their descendants. Area (TCA) tres over the lagoon from the main settlement), all Ian Karika Wilmott the land is either individually or communally owned, Resource management tools currently used to ad- 11 The Kakerori Story and in the past was used for fishing, hunting cray- dress this aim are: Dr Hugh Robertson fish, birds and coconut crabs and collecting leaves 1 The closure of the Funafuti Conservation Area and wood. 12 A visit to the Vatthe to all forms of fishing, hunting and collecting, Conservation Area, Santo, Vanuatu Conservation Officer teaching class 8 boys about the biodiversity of the CA Joe Reti 14 A network of small, community-owned Village Fish Reserves in Samoa Jennifer Kallie 16 News Brief 1 CALL Newsletter Issue no 3SPREP July–September 1999 South Pacific Regional Environment Programme except for green and brown coconuts. The distribution and changes in populations of benefit of this method of fisheries management important animals and plants found inside the is to allow populations to reproduce and CA. individuals to grow to a size (in the case of fish 2 To compare patterns inside the area with and crabs) where they produce an exponent- those occurring in unprotected parts of the ially larger amount of eggs. This can result in a atoll in order to identify any beneficial impacts Conservation Area becoming a source of the FCA is having. juvenile fish, crabs and birds for other parts of To date, we have been monitoring our reef eco- the atoll. As the area becomes crowded with systems and sea-bird populations. fish (within five years), the adult fish will also migrate out onto the fishing ground (Russ and Reef ecosystems Alcala 1996). 2 The establishment and implementation of To answer the question of whether protection is education and awareness programmes to helping to increase our fisheries resources, we have enhance understanding and care for the needs a robust scientific survey design and methods which and benefits of natural resource management. compare abundance and diversity of indicator or- ganisms at a number of impact sites (within CA) 3 The establishment of a management body and and control (outside CA) sites. Within these sites, by-laws for the management of the Conserva- we take samples in each habitat (lagoon, reef slope, tion Area. reef top and ocean reef terrace) as different spe- These tools will not be successful individually be- cies prefer different habitats. We need to complete cause: 7 replicate 30m x 10m transects for each of the ❚ we cannot close a fishing and hunting ground following monitoring tasks: fish abundance and per- without the understanding and support of the cent coral and algae cover. This is in order to ac- whole community; count for the natural variability within the sites and ❚ we cannot increase community understanding habitats. and support without research and monitoring results showing the conservation methods used are providing benefits to our natural resources and to the community; and ❚ we cannot make effective management decisions without information about the resources that we are trying to manage. Therefore, monitoring becomes our fourth major management tool. Aims of biodiversity and ecosystem monitor- ing in the FCA 1 To develop an understanding of patterns in the CA’s physical environment and in the size, Survey team about to dive in the Conservation Area Training in open water SCUBA Diving Certificate with Foua Toloa 2 CALL Newsletter Issue no 3 July–September 1999 Sharing monitoring results with the community Then there is the identification and counting of the time this year. Bi-monthly surveys entail approxi- indicator species.There is a lot of work involved in mating the numbers of the 15 sea bird species, learning to identify and count 76 species of indica- five shore bird species and two land bird species tor fish, 141 species of food fish, 149 mobile inver- to be found on the islets and documentation of tebrates such as crabs and sea cucumbers and 76 nesting and roosting behaviour. physical measures including corals, algae and sand/ After long delays in obtaining information, together gravel/rock. That is why we need a well trained ...we repeated our with time and staff constraints, we are now ready team to split up these tasks. Training or expert ad- survey design to begin monitoring the coconut crab populations vice is also required for survey design and analysis after 1.5 years. as well. Vegetation and insect biodiversity surveys of the data collected. We were pleas- have also been completed but not yet analysed due antly surprised to Using a GPS (geographic positioning system) to re- to delays in identification. identify all our survey sites, we repeated our survey Information from reef and bird surveys and counts see some very design after 1.5 years. We were pleasantly surprised of turtle sightings and nests is shared with the com- early signs of to see some very early signs of increasing munity via reports submitted, information seminars, increasing populations of some fast-growing indicator organ- radio programmes and the monthly newspaper up- isms within the Conservation Area while populations populations of date. Fact sheets on resource management con- of the same organisms outside the area declined or some fast-grow- cepts, life cycles and management needs of differ- remained the same. ing indicator ent species are also provided to the community. We hope that this information is assisting the com- organisms within Sea birds the Conservation munity to understand and care for their Conserva- Area while Local information about sea birds shows us that tion Area and their atoll’s natural resources. numbers of breeding birds have drastically declined The information gathered from regular monitoring populations of the over the last 30 years with some species no longer is also used to assist the Conservation Area Coor- same organisms breeding in the area. The ban on bird harvesting dinating Committee (CACC) to make management outside the area and disturbance within the CA aims to reverse this decisions that are based on the status of resource trend. Monitoring of our bird populations is neces- declined or populations. remained the sary to determine whether this objective is being met. So far, we are doing approximate counts every same. Aims of community surveying and awareness two months to identify when the major breeding sea- monitoring sons for the different species are. 1 To gather information about the community’s Dr Dick Watling from Environmental Consultants Fiji use and perceived importance of natural Ltd undertook the initial islet bird surveys and trained resources on Funafuti atoll. staff in identification and survey methods. A black noddy (lakia) nest census (nests per tree and occu- 2 To monitor the impact of our education and pied trees versus unoccupied trees) was performed awareness programmes on the community in on three islets inside and three islets outside the order to use this information in planning CA at the time, and will be repeated at the same ongoing and more relevant programmes in the future. 3 CALL Newsletter Issue no 3 July–September 1999 References We have adapted the pro-forma questionnaire pro- Profiting from natural resources vided by SPREP in our Project Preparation Docu- Environment Unit Ministry of ment (Environment Unit, 1995) to develop a com- Business skills that let commu- Natural Resources and munity survey/questionnaire that aims to give an- nities profit from their natural Environment, GOT. 1995. swers on the use and importance of natural re- resources while still preserving Funafuti Marine Conserva- sources and public awareness of the Conservation them was the focus of a ten- tion Area, Tuvalu, Project Area. day workshop held in Apia, Preparation Document, Samoa from 20 to 30 September. A total of 22 SPREP Apia. Our survey method included a sample of 100 house- community members and conservation Kaly, U.L., Alefaio, T.M., holds (approximately three per cent of the popula- workers attended the workshop. They came Ludescher, C.M., Talakatoa, tion) stratified according to the size of each com- from the 17 Conservation Areas that have K. and Alefaio, S. 1999. munity living on Funafuti. Some older people an- been established in 12 Pacific island coun- Second Marine Survey of swered questionnaires in interviews, while other tries by SPREP’s South Pacific Biodiversity Funafuti Conservation Area, people answered questionnaires by themselves.