Study shows watershed management is critical to coral reef health
 Palau, Guam and Pohnpei take steps to manage resources from ridge to reef

October 4, 2007 (Honolulu) – Clear-cutting, farming and development lead to erosion and runoff that kills corals, making it just as important to manage the land above reefs as it is to protect them from overfishing, a new study published in BioScience magazine concluded.

Over six years, scientists from Hawai‘i to Australia studied the connection between watersheds and adjacent coral reefs on three different Micronesian islands—Palau, Guam and Pohnpei – and found that sedimentation and runoff were among the biggest threats to nearby reefs and were slowing down the progress of other marine conservation efforts, such as no fishing zones.

The Watersheds and Coral Reefs study describes how multiple threats to reefs combine with lethal results. River runoff sends mud into the ocean, where it is compacted around reefs. Algae can outgrow corals to form a mat that traps the mud and prevents coral recruitment. When overfishing occurs, removal of plant-eating fish means algae growth can no longer be controlled, and the reefs are suffocated.

During the course of the study, the scientists recommended a set of scientifically based approaches for reversing the negative trends in reef health. Steps taken by the three Pacific island communities focused on managing the entire ecosystem and included relocating crops from upland rainforests to lowland areas, restoring vegetation in watershed areas to control erosion, halting the clearing of mangroves, and establishing a continuous protected area from the top of the watershed to the reef.

One community is also considering a temporary ban on catches of plant-eating fish.
“It is clear that sustaining our coral reefs depends on how well we manage human impacts from the mountains to the sea,” said Willy Kostka, a co-author of the study and Director of the Micronesia Conservation Trust. “The centuries-old way of managing reefs in Pacific islands recognizes that it is not the coral reefs and watersheds that can be managed, but rather the human activities affecting these ecosystems. If we provide care and respect to our reefs, they will provide for us.”


Table 2. Coral diversity versus distance from shore in Fouha Bay, Guam in 1978 and in 2003.
1978
2003
Distance from shore
(meters)
Number of coral species
Distance from shore
(meters)
Number of coral species
0-25
3
0-40
0
0-75
40
45-90
5
0-125
89
100-275
41
0-200
104
    

Fouha Bay, the study site in Guam, is surrounded by steep hills that deer and pig hunters often burn to clear vegetation, which accelerates erosion rates. The bay has high levels of sedimentation that are suffocating the reefs. Data taken along the southern side of the bay in 1978 and again in 2003 showed a clear loss of coral species and coral cover over time that was apparently due to watershed discharges.


The study’s conclusion that coral reefs and other coastal marine ecosystems effectively extend into adjacent watersheds leads the authors to the recommendation that they should be managed as an integrated unit. The paper explains, “Marine protected areas often will miss their targets of resource protection unless terrestrial protected areas are established and enforced.”

The authors state that traditional ways of managing human interactions with the reef are still effective in modern times, listing Palau’s Marine Protection Act of 1994 as an example of new legislation for no-take areas based on traditional knowledge of spawning sites. As far as Western governments, the authors suggest that, in addition to a needed review of U.S. federal legislation, they follow the lead of traditional societies and consider granting near- and off-shore leases for community-based conservation, just as they do for fish cages and oil drilling. The authors say if coral reef resources are not better protected from land-based impacts, they will continue to decline.

“Many Pacific island cultures treat the land–sea interface as a continuum rather than a boundary, and this ridge-to-reef stewardship recognizes that upslope activities affect people and resources farther down a watershed and in the ocean. Traditional leadership, which still exists in many of these islands, is hereditary, with time horizons longer than the two- to four-year electoral cycles prevalent in Western democracies. This helps to prevent a problem, common in industrialized nations, in which stakeholders and policymakers neglect to consider the future ecological, social, and economic consequences of their present activities on natural resources.”

From Watersheds and Coral Reefs: Conservation Science, Policy, and Implementation, BioScience magazine
 

One of the paper’s case studies focuses on the Enipein watershed on the island of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia. The watershed was located above a marine protected area that was struggling to recover coral and fish populations because clearing of an upland rainforest for cash crops resulted in extensive erosion and sedimentation onto the reef.
The data from the Enipein watershed research was shared with local chiefs, who decided to create a continuous protected area that begins in the upland rainforest and extends through the
mangroves and out to the reef. Efforts to switch from upland farming to lowland cultivation have been successful, as have been measures to reduce erosion and to protect coastal
mangroves.

“Pohnpei, Palau and Guam boast some of the best examples of what can happen when local communities understand their vested interest in nearshore ocean resources and take action to
preserve them,” said lead author Dr. Robert H. Richmond of the University of Hawaii’s Kewalo Marine Laboratory in Honolulu. “Reefs are in decline worldwide, and the Pacific islands of
Micronesia are showing us how modern science and traditional knowledge can be combined to reverse that trend.”

According to Noah Idechong, co-author of the Watersheds and Coral Reefs study and Vice Speaker of the House of Delegates for the 7th Palau National Congress, “From Pacific islands to the Western world, we know what is threatening our reefs and how to remedy those problems, but policy and political will are lagging behind available science. Policymakers often choose inactivity rather than subscribing to the precautionary principle. This approach undermines our ability to leave a sound environmental legacy for future generations.”

Hawai‘i fisherman Isaac Harp, who was not an author of the study, commented, “When foreign land and natural resource management strategies replaced Hawaii’s indigenous strategies, rapid degradation of Hawaii’s inland and coastal environments began. As indigenous island peoples across Pasifika and beyond understand, when you mismanage your inland environments, negative effects will trickle down and degrade your coastal environments. Sometimes we need to move forward by going backward, in this case by recognizing the value of and adopting indigenous management strategies. A thousand years of knowledge is better than a hundred years of assumptions.”
 

Watersheds and Coral Reefs’ study authors:
Robert H. Richmond is a research professor at the Kewalo Marine Laboratory, Pacific Biosciences Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, and a past director of the University of Guam Marine Laboratory. Teina Rongo earned his master’s degree in biology at the University of Guam Marine Laboratory in 2005, and is now working as a marine biologist based in the Cook Islands, Avarua, Rarotonga. Yimnang Golbuu and Steven Victor are chief researchers at the Palau International Coral Reef Center. Noah Idechong is Vice Speaker of the House of Delegates for the 7th Palau National Congress; a past director of the Palau Marine Resources Division; and a recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize. Gerry Davis is the assistant regional administrator for habitat conservation, National Marine Fisheries Service, Pacific Islands Regional Office, and past chief of the Guam Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources. Willy Kostka is the director of the Micronesia Conservation Trust, Federated States of Micronesia, and past director of the Conservation Society of Pohnpei. Leinson Neth is a biologist with the Conservation Society of Pohnpei. Michael Hamnett is the executive director of the Research Corporation of the University of Hawaii and the past director of the Social Sciences Research Institute, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Eric Wolanski is a leading scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Rongo, Golbuu, Victor, Idechong, Kostka, and Neth are indigenous Pacific islanders experienced in traditional and modern resource management practices.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

For charts, photographs and interviews with authors of the study, please contact:
Dr. Robert H. Richmond
Research Professor, Pacific Biosciences Research Center
Kewalo Marine Laboratory, Honolulu
Phone: 1-808-539-7331 (direct lab number) and 1-808-780-2189 (mobile)
e-mail: richmond@hawaii.edu

For comment from a local ocean expert in Hawai‘i, please contact:
Isaac Harp
Kanaka Maoli Fisherman
Phone: 808-345-6085
E-mail: imua-hawaii@hawaii.rr.com

Isaac Harp is a Kanaka Maoli (indigenous to Hawai‘i) fisherman and author of the draft
management plan that sought to protect the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands’ marine environment and biodiversity. A public effort later led to the 2000 establishment of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve and the 2006 proclamation converting the Reserve into a Marine National Monument.