Transcript
Called the Little Dodo because it is a close relative of the long extinct bird, the manumea is described as a unique tooth-billed pigeon.
Our correspondent says few Samoans have seen the manumea, apart from its depiction on the country's twenty tala note and 50 sene coin.
JAMES ATHERTON: So this bird, for whatever reason, never made it to American Samoa, it's only in the Western island of Samoa, so very unique, and it had one other living relative in its particular endogenous, which is like its small family and that lived in Tonga apparently, and that's now extinct, quite a long time ago. We don't fully understand how it got here, and how is it that there's no other relative of the manumea in Fiji or other islands around the Pacific, it's a fascinating story, it's a very, very unique bird.
MOERA TUILAEPA-TAYLOR: Can you tell me a little bit about the international campaign to save the manumea.
JA: The campaign is a new one although have done these before in the past, back in the early 1990s, there was a major national campaign on the manumea through the schools to save the manumea, there was a bit of a gap I guess from then and until now and we have focussed on the last few years on the research but we really realised that we need to redo the campaign because while you might be doing interesting and important research to understand the bird, the bird is still being attacked and eaten and threaten, so we've got to get a handle on this threat and that's why we are ramping up the awareness part of the programme nationally and internationally. And the reason for the international exposure is really Moera, is to get more interest from donors overseas because we don't have a huge amount of money to use for our work here in Samoa, conservation is a poor cousin to many other thematic areas, we have to fight for every dollar we get, so we wanted to get bigger exposure and we've been able to do that. Like all animals in the forest, they [manumea] have a role they have an important role to play, the manumea spreads fruits and seeds of many of our native trees, along with other pigeons. So its iconic, it's the national bird of Samoa, very unique but it's also very important for our forest and without the manumea we could be losing some of our trees.
MTT: The tragedy would be that they [manumea] did become extinct.
JA: Absolutely, it would be an absolute tragedy and we think we can avoid that but we do need to step up our efforts.
MTT: In other parts of the world, whatever the national animal is of that country, they are painted everywhere or are on logos on jackets. In some ways, would it be something that your organisation would consider - to try and make it [manumea] more visible people, even though obviously very difficult to catch.
JA: The more we get the image out there, on tee-shirts, on bags, look it's on the back of a few buses, save the manumea, so I agree with you, we need to promote it and that's what we intend to do with the campaign, and the earlier campaigns in the 1990s, they had thousands of posters in Samoa that were given to all the schools, they had a mascot, and a number of Environment Ministry staff would dress up as the manumea and go to schools and do the manumea dance, so that's a great way to engage with the kids, and so, the fact few people have seen it., they all know about it and they have heard about it and maybe they have seen the picture on a poster but it is an animal that few people can perhaps relate to hugely, because they have never seen it and one of our challenges is try and find places where people can see them, and encourage people to seem them, basically.
