Word: idechong
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...realized early on that we had no surveys--we didn't even know what we had," says Idechong, who worked for the government's Division of Marine Resources from 1978 to '94. "There was no management program at all. And that scared me." Idechong began studies in 1988--and, crucially, started talking with the local fishermen. By sharing information, Idechong got a picture of what species were in danger, while the fishermen learned how to manage fish stocks for the longer term. "By working with them we ended up getting a lot of support...
...Idechong's work culminated in the Marine Protection Act of 1994, which banned export of certain species and regulated the fishing for others. "The law went into effect just in time," says Idechong, who drafted it in 1990 but had to wait four years for the political leadership to approve...
Raised in Ngiwal, a fishing village on Palau's largest island, Babeldaob, Idechong had his eyes opened to nature's riches only when he left for a year of high school in the U.S. in 1970. He spent that period amid the lakes and forests around Pine City, Minnesota--"one of the best times of my life"--and realized that "wildlife was the field I wanted...
...went to college in Hawaii and then returned to Palau, where he started working for the government. In 1994 he founded the Palau Conservation Society, the archipelago's only homegrown non-governmental organization. He has traveled to Britain, Canada, Italy, the Solomon Islands and Fiji to study, but Idechong has never strayed too far from his village roots. Every time he begins a conservation program, his first instinct is to confer with the village elders. He is now starting to focus on ways of protecting the dugong (sea cow) and the hawksbill turtle, both of which are vulnerable to fishermen...
...Idechong is not done with his worrying, though. As the government plans to build roads, golf courses and more hotels to boost tourism, he sees more dangers on the horizon for the country's ecosystem. "Palau right now needs visionaries--people who can say what they want Palau to look like 50 years from now, and what we must do now to make that happen." In other words, more people with Idechong's kind of vision...