World Status, Exploitation and Trade - WIDECAST

SOLOMON ISLANDSalso been a tendency for people to move from the interior to the coast,because of ease of transport and, once there, to rely more on marine producefor food (Vaughan, 1981).Hawksbill hunting has undoubtedly intensified as a result of the commercialdemand for shell, and there is evidence of local population declines, forexample on Silcopo, in the Arnavon Islands (see under "trends in nestingnumbers"). On Wagina, several families used to rely solely on turtlehunting for their income, but they have had to turn to supplementary sourcesof income, in spite of the higher price for shell, partially because ofdeclines in turtle abundance (Vaughan, 1981). Statistics on the amount ofHawlcsbill shell sold by two local co-operatives in Wagina, compiled byMcKeown (1977) and Vaughan (1981) are given in Table 183, and both indicatethat the volume of trade has declined.Table 183. Quantities of turtle shell (leg) sold by two co-operatives inWagina, compiled by McKeown (1977) and Vaughan (1981). * indicates thatestimates were made for the whole year by scaling up data for part of theyear (>S months)1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980Oronoa - - - - 298 175 241 139 55 *Nilcumarore 436 258 288 152 91 172 * - 233 * 200 *Domestic trade Almost all of the hunting of Green Turtles is for localconsumption of meat on a subsistence basis. The meat and eggs are veryrarely sold, but may be seen in Gizo, where a cooked turtle will bring up toSI$35 (Vaughan, 1981). The shells are occasionally sold to traders, butthey fetch such low prices that the transport to Honiara is usuallyprohibitive, and they are usually thrown away (McKeown, 1977). The primaryincentive for hunting Hawksbllls is the sale of shell; some hunters do noteat the meat, hunting only for shell, but an increasing number of meathunters are catching Hawlcsbills because they can obtain a subsidiary incomefrom the shell. Most of the shell is sold to the village store or localco-op, which then sells it on to the exporting traders, although there issome direct dealing between traders and hunters. The price of shell in thevillages is said to have increased from SI$0.90 in 1972 to SI$7.00 in 1980(Vaughan (1981) implied that this was the price per kg, but McKeown (1977),from whom he derived the earlier figures, indicated that it was the priceper pound)International trade Almost all of the Hawksbill shell caught is destinedfor export, mostly to Japan (Vaughan, 1981). Japanese Customs statistics(Table 184) only report thfe import of "bekko" from the Solomon Islands,indicating that all the shell is of E. imbricata . The volume of imports in1986 was the highest since 1973, possibly Indicating that Japanese dealershave been turning to the Solomon Islands as imports from CITES Parties havebeen curtailed in recent years.The Statistics Office (Honiara) compiles estimates of the total quantity ofturtle shell exported from the Solomon Islands. These show that exportsamounted to 1133 kg in 1984, 1598 kg in 1985 and 568 kg in the first quarterof 1986. These show remarkably high correlation with the Japanese importstatistics.477