“Starting off as a member of the commune development committee’s environment commission I helped set objectives for the ‘Champion Community’ approach, and contributed to achieving those objectives. My forest management association applied for a small grant from NT to carry out small-scale fish farming in order to contribute to forest conservation. We are now using a second small grant to benefit the forest conservation / reforestation projects. I was also trained in survey techniques and herbarium collection for FBM’s yam work with Kew Gardens, and more recently in yam cultivation techniques.
"Other than the visible impacts like new fish ponds, trees, and yam cultivation demonstration plots, I notice various other impacts on a more personal level. I have become more serious in my dealings and now follow agricultural and environmental procedures more closely. I know how to deal with ‘enemies’ who try to pursue me over the new forest conservation guidelines that I enforce; I now send offending people to the local authorities, with whom my collaboration has vastly improved, as I am not afraid of repercussions in the community. There has been a large increase in the number of members in our forest management association. In the future I plan to protect and protect all our hard work; the trees that we have planted, the fish in our fishponds and the yams in their fields so as to increase production in the future. The forest is important to our community and more and more people are understanding this. We are coming up with new ways to help protect it and live alongside it.”
