Last week I had the pleasure of traveling to Tavea
Island in the District of Lekutu to attend a Resource Management Planning
Workshop facilitated by Wildlife Conservation Society. This workshop was the
first of a series, with the same concepts as the ones that have been held in
our District and attended by our village environment committee. It was designed
to raise awareness about Ridge to Reef management and help community members
begin to identify targets and threats to healthy and connected ecosystems.
What was especially great for me was that we had a whole
session on the third day for participants to be introduced to basic network
concepts, to fill in the SNA questionnaire, and also to discuss barriers to
collaboration/communication for effective resource management. While I played a
key role in helping design the research methods, two facilitators from WCS
carried it out in Fijian. It went over really well, although I have not yet had
a chance to begin data entry and analysis.
I’m actually glad now that things didn’t go as planned when
we tried to do the first round of sampling last October. It gave us a chance to
improve our methods and simplify the questionnaire. Hoping to do some
preliminary data entry in the next week to check for anything we may need to
improve before our next sampling in late Feb-early March.
 |
| Tavea Island Locator Map |
 |
| Tavea Island, Lekutu District, Bua Province -- The white in the center is the village (about 30 houses). You can walk from one side to the other in less than a minute! |
 |
| As we headed to the boat landing we found our fellow facilitators stuck in the mud. |
 |
| View from Vanua Levu out to Tavea (on right). |
 |
| Transport out to Tavea. |
 |
| Kini Koto presenting basic network concepts to workshop participants. |
 |
| A woman filling out the SNA questionnaire. |
 |
| Facilitators leading participants through the questionnaire. |
 |
| The workshop ended by releasing a tagged hawksbill turtle, "Adi Tavea", back to sea. |
No comments:
Post a Comment