Bio-diversity

Deforestation within a fragile island ecosystem contributes to the loss of biodiversity and land degradation. Natural forest cover in Vanuatu is about 36% of the total land area . These are mainly within the larger islands. Many small coralline islands Coastal forest vegetation including areas of mangroves are vulnerable to destruction to logging for commercial, fuel wood and settlement. Traditional local knowledge of bird species are gradually eroding. Increasing sedimentation in the coral reef, lagoons and seagrass beds. The literal vegetation of the island is vitally important to be protected for unintentional destruction. 2011 coconut crab survey confirmed the decline of stock to destruction of coastal forest. There has been environmental protection activities ongoing in the island of Aniwa. In support to the community initiative of restocking of wood lots for timber, fuel wood and food security through reforestation, the project will target to build local community capacity to improve the stock native fruit trees to help poor farmers for economic income. Orange is one of the incoming generating activities which Aniwa Island is well known to with its history as one of the suppliers of oranges. As being one of the high income generating resources for the Island, it has been witnessed in the past five years, tremendous decrease in orange production due to fungal attack to the citrus plants. The large mass of death were due to old age. New plants introduced faced high death rates that warrant local undertaking at various methods in cultivating and rearing healthy plants to produce good yield. Local knowledge reported healthy growth of citrus with host nitrogen fixing plant. The pilot project is looking at introducing agricultural nitrogen fixing plants into the nursery for distribution. It is of high priority to address the replanting of orange to assist them to not only rely only on the forestry but orange as another alternate means of improving their living standards for sustainable management of forest on the island. Local knowledge on the agricultural nitrogen fixing plants become host plants for healthy orange trees. With the current demand on the orange planting, available resource is not there to sustain the nursery supply of orange seedling for replanting. The growing population has put pressure on overharvesting but not enough emphasis is put out there on replanting. Orange season occurs once a year and as a medium term crop for generating income faster but due to the high prices in sandalwood, more effort is drawn towards sandalwood as prices are good. However income generating through fruit harvesting is sustainable utilisation of forest, rather than killing a tree. It has also been observed that no proper training has been put in place available for planting oranges, therefore to assist the community to be able to plant best orange planting materials with agricultural nitrogen fixing plants to improve soil fertility. As not much attention is given to oranges plants, unnecessary bush clearance for food planting has caused oranges trees to die out thus enabling the Kasis as an invasive species dominating the very large areas and suppressing and damaging of old mother tree oranges. The project will seek community perception on the declined of orange trees. And demonstrate host plants to improve orange restocking and improve economic incentives for the replanting of oranges. A specialised proper orange nursery establishment will require higher demand for water which is often a problem on the island. The Aniwa island as low coralline The project intended to provide water for the nursery and as well as helping relieve for drinking water on small island that are often affected by droughts. Aniwa Island being on a low altitude as compared to other major Islands in Vanuatu, limited rainfall is collected to sustain the current water storage to supply sufficient water for the community and even the nursery developments. Current water storage allocated for the current nursery is not always sufficient to supply the next or any other extra seedlings as anticipated for orange planting. The nursery will require additional extra catchment to supply a bigger capacity Tank. With the limited water storage capacity, extra heat from the sun is also another contributing factor which is affecting the seedlings. Extra time allocated for water transportation is drawn from underground wells to sustain the current high demand of seedling required for the project.

Vanuatu