World Environment Week at the MPA
Theme: Kolektem Rabis Snel (Collect Rubbish Snails)

June 20-24, 2005--

Each day of the week children and adults were encouraged to collect the Giant African Snail in the gardens and forests. This is an introduced pest that is highly damaging to local food crops. The collected snails were weighed each day and the highest collectors were entered into a competition. By the end of the week, the villages had collected 618.7 kilos of invasive snails. The overall winner was Mr. Kalmelu Sisi with 87.3 kilos.

The second activity sponsored by the MPA was a marine snail eradication program. The predatory snail Drupella is a major consumer of live coral tissue. Outbreaks can kill large areas of healthy coral reefs. The MPA provided diving equipment to 17 participants on Thursday June 9th. In less than 2 hours the participants had collected 2,377 individual Drupella from the reefs in the MPA. The overall winner for Drupella was Ms. Leikas Joseph with 592 marine snails.

Finally, the MPA sponsored a "Create with Waste" campaign. Villagers were asked to create something only using discarded household waste products. By Friday afternoon the MPA had received over 40 entries.

Entered waste-creations ranged from robots to farm animals. First prize went to Ms. Elizabeth Andy (4 years old) for her ingenious turtle creation made from recycled plastic bags.

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