Live and on the Air

Some kind of cool news to report on. One of those word of mouth things happenned this past weekend when a New Zealand news crew was here to cover some other stories and heard about the Moso turtle project. So after they were finished with their filming in Port Vila they headed over to Moso to do a story on the project.

The crew were really great and got some good interviews and footage both in the village and over on the nesting beach. The link for the interview is here http://www.tv3.co.nz/News/NewsDisplay/tabid/209/articleID/19279/Default.aspx

Testing, Testing

It's been a busy few months and everything is falling into place with the project. Funding was secured. We partnered with an eco-volunteer company. Bungalows were built for the project. We did some training with the community turtle monitors and got them started on the turtle nesting survey. And now we're testing out the project.

We figured in order to get the community some practice at hosting and working with the eco-volunteers it might be a good idea to have some of the long-term (1-2 years) volunteers who are working in town (Port Vila) come out on weekends. This would give the community some practice in feeding and housing the volunteers as well as give the turtle monitors some practice in working with people over on the nesting beach.

It's been good. The bungalows were officially opened when the first group arrived amidst flowers, speeches and the music of the village stringband. We've had some amazing nights over on the beach, full moon night especially are indescribable. All the groups have had a lot of fun with the adventure of hiking across the island and then walking the beach, hoping to come across a turtle. And luckily enough I think we've found at least one for every group!

Moso Turtle Project Partners With GVI

Well it's been a few months of correspondence with eco-volunteer companies to see if we could find one that was a good fit for the turtle conservation project at Moso. After talking with quite a few companies it seemed like Global Vision International (GVI) would be the best fit for our little project here.

So while the discussions have gone well the final step before approval was to have someone from GVI come to the site to visit. Just as a final check to make sure the site was suitable, the community was really onboard, etc.

The trip went well I think. We had some good discussions with the community. Went over to check out the beach (sadly no turtles were found but some beach barbecued fresh fish helped to soften the disappointment a bit I think). And we picked out the site for the volunteer bungalows.

And after the trip was finished the final verdict was that GVI, Wan Smolbag and the community would give this project a go. You can find the GVI webpage for this project at http://www.gvi.co.uk/pages/projectDetail.asp?expedition=116

MCAF Provides a Home for the Volunteers

Once the community had made the final decision to host an eco-volunteer project we started to look for a way to fund some type of housing for the volunteers. And today that funding became a reality.

The Marine Conservation Action Fund (MCAF) out of the New England Aquarium, in Boston, has not only agreed to fund the costs of building some bush style bungalows but they have also agreed to pay the wages of 2 community turtle monitors for the full five month nesting season! This is a huge thing since we don't know when the eco-volunteers part of the project will get started. With this funding though it means the community can get the project underway and be into the swing of doing a really small scale survey by the time the volunteers arrive. Then with the additional manpower the survey can go into full swing.

If you want to see more information about the MCAF you can find it here http://www.neaq.org/scilearn/conservation/caf.html

Moso Signs on to Eco-Volunteer Project

After a few months of one on one discussions about the possible interest of trying an eco-volunteer project Wan Smolbag was finally able to hold a full community meeting out in the village. After discussing exactly what it would mean for the community to try hosting a conservation project, there was full community support of the idea.

So the next step is to partner up with an eco-volunteer sending company and build someplace for the volunteers to stay.