Tourism
Taping our Unique Birds to Lure More Visitors
Why authorities should exploit this
A lightly exploited niche of Pacific Islands tourism is bird watching. But Samoa, Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea still draw a trickle of intrepid adventurers who are prepared to put up with almost any hardship so as to lengthen their list of birds personally spotted, observed and photographed by them.
The Pacific Islands have quite a share of birds of species to be found no where else in the world, in just one country, or just one island, or in just one very laboriously reached locality. In Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Niue, Wallis and Futuna, Tokelau and Tuvalu are to be found 173 species of birds with a confirmed presence. Another 22 are thought to have been spotted in these localities.
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The Barking pigeon, Golden, Orange and Whistling doves, the Kadavu Shining Parrot, the Rotuma Myzomela, the Giant Forest Honeyeater, the Pink-billed Parrotfinch, the Rufous-necked Stint, the Wandering Whistling duck and the Ogea Monarch, are names to whet the appetite of any birdwatcher.
But where are the feathery, fluttering, barking, whistling and chirping critters to be found?
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Dick Watling, one of the Pacific¹s best known naturalists, with an international reputation that flared in 1983 when on the island of Gau, in central Fiji, on a dark night on top of a cliff, he rediscovered a bird recorded only once before and thought to have become extinct.
It was the Fiji Petrel, a skin of which existed in a British museum as the remains of the one and only specimen collected 129 years before.
The petrel is still very much with us; one flew into Watling¹s face to stun itself, as well as half-stunning Watling, as he set up nets in the hope of catching a bird he suspected flew in to roost at night after a day spent far out at sea.
Now he's produced the South Seas bird watchers' bible - the 272 pages of "A Guide to the Birds of Fiji and Western Polynesia".
It is targetted at Pacific Islands schools, libraries, universities, colleges and similar institutes in the hope of arousing a spot of bird-watching fanaticism in the hearts of young Pacific Islanders, thus encouraging the conservation of a number of species that are sliding towards extinction as rainforest areas dwindle.
What will make bird watchers twitter with joy is the detail Watling goes into, including locations, the position, with maps of national parks and reserves in which the birds are abound, although often somewhat invisible, and rating as to the survival prospects of each species.
Up in the Aopo Cloud Forest Conservation in Savai'i, Samoa, at night, it is "seriously" cold and without a guide you'll get horribly lost.
But you will probably spot all of Samoa's endemic birds as they flitter about up at Aopo in their highest density.
It's awfully difficult to reach the caldera of Niuafo¹o, Tonga, to see the endemic Tongan Megapode and Blue-crowned Lorikeet.
You can take a plane ride there, but don't count on getting one back at the time you want it.
Be careful trundling through the Huvalu Conservation area, of Niue. There are four forbidden tapu sites. Step into one and who knows what may happen? In the Bouma National Heritage Park at Taveuni, Fiji, you have to get in the forest right under the canopy, if you are to have any chance of seeing the very shy, rare and exotic Silktail. The book has no national or international distributors. You can obtain a copy from Dick Watling himself at: watling@is.com.fj, www.pacificbirds.com , www.environmentfiji.com
