Protecting

turtles

Dear Sir Thanks for your very generous arti cle on the Wan Smolbag Theatre. I have two comments to make, plus a sort of related comment on a letter in the same issue (PIM December, 1996).

First, in my faxed reply to Atama Raganivatu’s questions, I fear my hand writing let me down. I hope I would never

claim that the WSB was “a king of the media unit”, but believe I said “a kind of media unit”.

Also, I hope we would never claim immunisation rates jumped fourfold in the light of our visits. We like to think our work effects some changes, but it can’t change the world!

I point these things out lest people feel our heads have swollen beyond all recog nition (not unknown amongst the theatre

community)

Regarding our turtle work, we do have a certain pride.

We have worked closely with several communitieswho sybsequently put taboos on the killing of turtles, the steal ing of eggs and have also appointed ‘tur tle monitors’ in the village.

Would that turtles could bury their eggs as deep in the sand as Timeon loane (PIM Dec, 96) does his head. If Pacific communities limited turtle killing to the needs of the occasional ceremony, there would be some hope. But, in most places, turtles of all ages are killed (despite the fact that they never breed before they are 20 years old) and eggs are regularly eaten.

It is, for me, the mindless killings of turtles that puts humans ‘on a par’ with animals. As one village turtle monitor (a Pacific Islander, not loane’s demon Western radical conservationist) put it, if we do not care about the fate of such a weird, unique creature, what hope is there for the universe?

It is also worth noting that there is an element of the culture that does empathise with animals. Most islands here in Vanuatu would have a ‘turtle clan’, a family for whom it is taboo to eat turtles.

Peter Walker

Director Wan Smolbag Theatre Port Vila Vanuatu

Letters to the Editor should be addressed to: The Editor Pacififc Islands Monthly P O Box 1167 Suva

Fiji