Cook Islands under siege

Forest and Bird, Issue 279, 1 February 1996, Page 26

Cook Islands under siege

JACQUI BARRINGTON

The Cooks are in the news these days more as a dubious tax haven than as a holiday

destination.

recently

visited Rarotonga and also flew to Aitutaki for the first time. One successful species recovery programme was the highlight in an otherwise sobering survey of besieged island ecosystems.

IFTEEN SMALL ISLANDS with a combined land area of just 237 square kilometres scattered over 1.8 million square kilometres of the South Pacific — the Cooks are a collection of coral cays and atolls with one high young volcanic island — the capital, Rarotonga. Samoa lies to the west and French Polynesia to the east. The islands are generally thought to be the legendary Hawaiki from which the Polynesian waka set out upon their great ocean voyages to New Zealand some 700 to 1,000 years ago. Though the languages today are not identical, they are still close enough for New Zealand and Cook

"We are an island nation gone mad, behaving like a limitless continent in a world that has already turned into a crowded island." GAVAN DAWS, SHOAL OF TIME, 1968

Islands Maori to understand one another. An unspoiled tropical environment and friendly locals are promoted as the islands’ greatest assets by its number one industry, tourism. The friendly locals are still genuine. But untouched paradise? Unfortunately for the Cooks, many of the ugly environmental problems of the industrial world find their parallel in concentrated form in these tiny islands. I first visited Rarotonga in 1990 and was charmed by its unhurried atmosphere. Most of its population of 10,000 (more than half of the nation’s total) live on the flat coastal strip around the near-circular island, while its steep volcanic interior is still thickly forested.

Five years on, the pace of everything had markedly increased. Runaway tourism, throwaway consumerism, and incremental pollution are shredding the country’s fragile terrestrial and lagoon ecosystems. Tourism is currently worth some $60 million to the national economy with visitor numbers up from 10,000 in 1972 to 60,000 today. Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Henry is now suggesting 100,000 as a sustainable limit and has decided to target the luxury end of the market. But misleading promotion is luring high-living Europeans and Americans to a destination which fails to deliver on false glitzy promises. The trumpeted increase in

tourism numbers has therefore been accompanied by a reduction in the length of stay, as disenchanted visitors depart early. Vegetation destruction is now rampant, with venerable old trees hacked back to mutilated stumps. An obsession with "neat and tidy" and unobstructed views, no doubt imported by returning islanders as well as New Zealand expatriates, is also causing a worrying loss of coastal vegetation. While the removal of big trees is promoted as a hurricane safety measure, the diffusing buffer effect of vegetation, which can break the force of a hurricane, is ignored. Hurricane damage to the interior only facilitates the spread of invasive introduced plants. Gerald McCormack, Director of the Cook Islands Natural Heritage Project, is opposed to plans by the tourist industry to open up the interior of Rarotonga with a cross-island road. He’s also opposed to better tracks up into the interior for eco-tourism. One well known track that features several rare plants has already been invaded with weeds due to increased visitor numbers. A major difficulty for conservation is

that all land is in customary ownership and cannot be sold — only leased. Therefore when it’s a question of setting land aside for conservation, or indeed for finding a new tip site, the government is dependent on the goodwill of individual families. The only formally protected area in the country, Suwarrow National Park, is a major seabird breeding site and covers only 40 hectares. Attempts over many years to reserve the central highland area of Rarotonga in a cloud forest reserve have no local support — "too high to be threatened anyway," in the words of one official. HE ISLANDS have only ten species } of native breeding landbirds but six of them are found nowhere else. These endemics include the endangered kakerori, the subject of a major recovery programme (see box page 31). Other birds include the Rarotonga starling or i’oi, which while limited in range, is holding its own. These are large, aggressive birds that have retreated into the interior of the island from the modified lowlands. The fruit dove, or kukupa, is a brightly coloured bird endemic to Rarotonga and Atiu. It and the Pacific pigeon or rupe are present in the interior of Rarotonga and are both still being shot for food. The vini or Tahiti lorikeet, also known as nun bird or kuramo’o, was common on Aitutaki within living memory. It is a small, strikingly pretty parakeet with dark blue and white plumage that feeds on banana and other flowers. When pesticide spraying diminished two to three years ago as New Zealand imports of bananas were stopped, kuramo’o numbers began to increase substantially. The Conservation Service is trying to establish a reserve for the kuramo’o, but local owners are reluctant to give up land. The Mangaian kingfisher or tangaeo is reduced to 300-500 birds. Anecdotal evidence suggests its numbers are decreasing. Only 190 nests of the Atiu swiftlet or kopeka are known and breeding success is very low. It is predated by crabs, and only nests in two caves. After the kakerori it will be the next main conservation priority. In the battle for the conservation dollar, the New Zealand government has largely refused to help the Cooks, preferring instead to put its money into the Solomons. New Zealand money has gone instead towards projects such as wharf development, and the misguided planting of steep cleared slopes on Rarotonga with pines for erosion control.

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As in most island ecosystems, introduced pests are a major problem and include rats (both ship rat and kiore) as well as cats, dogs and mynas. The problems are spreading as increasing numbers of people move inland. Mynas are a major hate of Cook Islanders (and the author). They were introduced to the islands to control stick insects in copra plantations and are now ubiquitous. They forage right down to the sea edge, walk boldly into houses and compete aggressively for nesting sites with native birds and sometimes attack them. Cyclone Sally in 1987 knocked back the myna population, but they have since recovered and a bounty system didn’t work. However, despite increasing numbers they have so far failed to invade the mountainous inland areas of Rarotonga. The first crown of thorns starfish was sighted in the Cooks in 1969 although the first plague only occurred in 1983. As in other areas of the Pacific, the ecological significance of these starfish is in dispute. Are the plagues a naturally occurring cyclic phenomenon? Is there a link with nutrient runoff? Are they a cause or a symptom of reef degradation? Meanwhile former good dive sites are now a desert as thousands of the starfish have infested the reefs.

ITUTAK] (eee is a high figts volcanic/ \~ i. lagoon atoll with 2,400 inhabitants approximately 50 minutes flying time north of Rarotonga. It is famous for its shimmering blue triangular lagoon — one of the largest in the world. However its recent history is more a tale of the death of the blue lagoon. The corals outside the reef are today mostly grey and lifeless and professional divers admit their businesses are in jeopardy, as they have to travel further and further to find something worth looking at. Overfishing, coral bleaching and pollution are among the causes. The South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme identifies poison fishing, using derris root and barringtonia seeds, dynamite fishing and gill nets as significant factors in overfishing. Reef fish have been fished out us- bm ing modern diving equipment, and the reefs are littered with discarded lines and hooks, and even anchors and chains. The old ra’ui (rahui) system was a complex and flexible arrangement allowing for a Cee SES 18 167° WEST

rotating no-take zone of up to a third of the reef to give each part a chance to bounce back. That system has broken down. There is a feeling that ra’ui is old

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fashioned, although the current mayor is doing his best to revive the concept. Corals survive best in temperatures below 28 degrees although they will survive hotter temperatures for short periods. Coral bleaching sets in when water temperatures rise to 31 or 32

degrees for long periods as they did throughout much of the Pacific during the past decade under the influence of protracted El Nino conditions. Coral bleaching has not (yet) occurred on uninhabited Manuae Atoll some 80 kilometres away. Manuae is part of a huge

volcanic crater and has been nominated for an international marine park, but the government has it earmarked for an international luxury resort plus casino. New Zealand scientist Charles D’Arby attributes the death of the lagoon to fertiliser runoff from the time when exports of oranges, bananas and copra provided the bulk of Aitutaki’s foreign earnings. Because of its huge size, the lagoon is relatively slow to flush, and pollution problems may have built up insidiously over decades. Large quantities of paraquat are still used in agriculture. When banana exports were in full swing, bunches were routinely dipped in vats of a chemical ripening retardant on the quay before loading. At the end of the day this was dumped into the lagoon. Aitutaki has one Conservation Service worker — its only employee outside Rarotonga. He has set up a conservation task force, but he has no boat to monitor the lagoon and, anyway, many islanders resent the service for "restricting their freedom". Unlike Rarotonga, almost all Aitutaki’s vegetation has been highly modified by clearance for agriculture and by fire. Only

a small patch, the size of a house section and the last stronghold of the kuramo’o, is left at the northern end. The northern crook of the lagoon by the airport, supposedly protected as a fish spawning ground, has recently suffered wholesale bulldozing of all waterfront vegetation, including ngangie, a plant that shades and cools the water and is the local ecological equivalent of the mangrove. Government plans are afoot to triple the number of available hotel beds on Aitutaki over the next ten years. Many islanders do not want this kind of development. They fear the atoll cannot sustain it either environmentally or socially. There is already much resentment at Air Rarotonga’s day trips onto the lagoon which come direct from the main island, putting further stress on local resources, while adding nothing to the island’s economy. As the old systems have broken down, the fragile environment of the Cooks hangs in the balance. The following anecdote perhaps epitomises the paralysis. Fishermen on Aitutaki caught a large turtle, bound it up and put it on sale in the market to be eaten. One of the enlightened locals, working in the tourism industry, bought it to save it, having the notion to ship it back to an uninhabited

island. Until transport could be arranged, it was put in a cage in the polluted lagoon. Days became weeks; weeks became months. Five months went by and the turtle languished, weed growing on its shell, its eyes turning red, fungal infections invading its skin. Direct action finally came to the turtle’s aid and one night it was liberated. The unofficial rescuers tipped over the cage, and without a second’s hesitation the turtle began swimming strongly in the direction of the reef channel to the open sea and freedom. The question is whether the political will and the funds to save the lagoons from further degradation can be found, and how long they will take to recover. New Zealand aid and advice should be geared towards a sustainable future for both the Cook Islands economy and that country’s unique species. @

JACQUI BARRINGTON 1s Forest and Bird’s northern field officer. She has had a long love affair with tropical islands and lived in the Carribean for seven years.