# Solomon Islands - Villagers slaughter 700 dolphins in retaliation.



## Y2KGT (Jul 20, 2009)

http://solomonstarnews.com/news/national/16985-villagers-slaughter-700-dolphins-in-retaliation

VILLAGERS of Fanalei in South Malaita have caught and slaughtered about 700 dolphins yesterday amidst condemnation by dolphin activists and Earth Island Institute (EII).

The mass capture and slaughter was made after villagers refused to renew the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) sealed with EII.
The two-year MOU expired in April last year.

Chairman of Fanalei Honiara based association Atkin Fakaia said his people resorted to their normal way of hunting dolphins after EII failed to honour the agreement.

"In the MOU, EII promised to give us $2.4 million, but they only gave us $700, 000," Mr Fakaia said.

He said people cannot wait because they need money to survive in the local economy.

"They go back to hunting dolphin in order to sell the dolphin teeth and meat to earn money," he said.

EII director Lawrence Makili blamed the Fanelei-Honiara based association for allegedly misusing the more than $400,000 he gave towards the end of 2011 following a consensus given by people in the village.

He alleged that it was the committee that misused the funds because EII is still waiting for them to surrender their retirements.

Mr Makili said this is the reason why EII agreed to give projects to individual families who applied rather than dishing out hard cash.

However, Makili said because the people have disobeyed and continued to hunt dolphins, EII has no option but to cut the funding.

By Eddie Osifelo


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## Y2KGT (Jul 20, 2009)

*Decrying Senseless Dolphin Killing*

http://dolphinproject.org/blog/post/decrying-senseless-dolphin-killing

Decrying Senseless Dolphin Killing

January 22, 2013 by Mark Palmer, Save Japan Dolphins

Earth Island Institute's International Marine Mammal Project decries the senseless killing of wild dolphins the Solomon Islands. Three years ago, our organization reached agreement with three villages in the Solomons to stop the slaughter of dolphins. We have since provided those villages with funding to help needed infrastructure rebuilding, pay schools fees for the children, and otherwise help the villagers. In accordance with our agreement, we have pledged additional funding to the villagers for more projects of this nature.

We stand behind the efforts we have made to convince the Solomon Islands tribal communities that the killing of dolphins should end. Many of the community members have seen that the killing of dolphins for teeth and food is not in their best interests. We continue to also work for the development of sustainable and Dolphin-Safe tuna fishing activities in the Solomons and believe that this can bring jobs and sustainable development.

The killing of dolphins and the capture of dolphins for the international blood dolphin$ captive trade are not sustainable.

The fault for the sudden decision to kill dolphins lies with a disparate group from one community, Fanalei, who broke from the consensus we have built around ending the dolphin killing. Many in this very community we helped are furious over these renegades. They have welcomed our support and recognize that the killing of dolphins is unnecessary and should not take place.

The story is even more complex. The Solomon Island captive dolphin traders, who continue to make millions of dollars on the blood trade in dolphins, have been the biggest opponents of the end of the Solomon Islands dolphin kills. They have claimed they are "saving" dolphins by capturing them instead of letting them be killed -- just like the captive dolphin traders do in Taiji, Japan. In fact, they are simply taking advantage of the local people to capture a few dolphins for the international trade, in which they can make as much as $150,000US per captive dolphin sold to dolphinariums in China, the Middle East, or the Caribbean. They oppose Earth Island's efforts to end the capture of wild dolphins for international trafficking, and they criticize our efforts to end the slaughter of dolphins in the Solomon Islands. There are reasons to believe there is corruption at work, and the dolphin captivity forces are behind this tragic resumption of the dolphin kill.

We continue to face tremendously difficult forces in the Solomon Islands: Dolphin traders, government corruption, failure to recognize the precarious status of dolphin populations in the region, and huge money being paid by outside forces to prop up and continue the dolphin trade at the expense of the ocean environment and the people of the Solomon Islands.

We stand behind our Solomons representative Lawrence Makili's efforts to continue to fight for a future for the Solomon Islands that prohibits the killing of dolphins and the capture and trade in live dolphins.


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## Y2KGT (Jul 20, 2009)

*Solomon Islands - Keep Promise to Ban Dolphin Exports*

Click on the link below to sign the petition.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/832/...promise-to-ban-dolphin-exports/?z00m=20429616

Last September, the government of the Solomon Islands promised to ban the capture and export of live dolphins from the first of January this year. The state had allowed bottlenose dolphins to be caught and sold to the aquarium industry.

This involves intense trauma to the wild dolphins dragged away from their lives and families. Those dolphins that don't die during or shortly after capture end up in aquariums abroad, where their lives are miserable and often very short. The conservation impact could also be serious. The ban looked like good news for the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins.

However, the Solomon Islands government has been vague about keeping the promise, with no confirmation beyond press articles. The country is being pressurised by CITES - Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species - to at least officially agree to exporting no more than 10 dolphins a year, something else it has yet to respond to.

Ask the Solomon Islands to officially confirm their ban on exporting bottlenose dolphins.


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## Jackson (Jan 30, 2009)

I can't believe how many places are doing these things


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## bigfishy (Jun 19, 2009)

Humans are scary 

There are a lot more things that you didn't know yet...

want to see? 

more gruesome story? xD


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