Sandalwood Replanting Project

The dry, western coast of Espiritu Santo is one of the few locations in Vanuatu where sandalwood grows and sale of this wood has provided the main economic input for the village for the past few generations. Kerepua's remote location, relatively small amount of arable land, and sparse population equate to very limited opportunities for commerce and few visits from cargo ships to buy more mainstream crops such as kava and copra. All of these factors have culminated in a heavy dependence on sandalwood. A recent study by the Forestry Department has shown that sandalwood from West Coast Santo has a higher oil content than from any other site in Vanuatu, exacerbating an already high pressure on this natural resource. Continued harvesting without management or replanting has left many areas completely devoid of sandalwood and other areas with very slow natural regeneration. The migration of people from the middle bush down to an aggregated ocean-side settlement (Kerepua Village) over the last 50 years has led to unclear land ownership and poor collective management. This scenario has played out many times in developing countries and the result is nearly always the same: a "harvest before someone else gets it" mentality, depleting a resource that was once abundant.

Aside from the obvious economic factors, there are social factors to be considered as well. The main social issue is the increase in the number of land disputes with increased depletion of sandalwood. Disputes arising from the sandalwood shortage are compounded when individuals venture farther into the bush, where land ownership is less clear. A village such as Kerepua does not cope as well with land disputes as other areas in Vanuatu, where there are larger populations and more commerce. The people of Kerepua are very dependent on cooperation in their daily life due to the remote location and rugged environment of West Coast Santo. The continued over-harvesting and lack of replanting of sandalwood is slowly agitating the social fiber of Kerepua.

The aim of this project is to start a large-scale community sandalwood nursery, replant in areas where the resource has been exhausted, and write a management plan for existing sandalwood in the forest. The community would like to produce around 6000 seedlings this year. A tree nursery on this scale requires poly-bags as containers for the seedlings. At the Development Committee meeting in August of 2006, this project was voted the top priority by the community.

Materials Required

Item Price/Unit #Units Total
This project was joined with the Spice Production Project for fundraising purposes, so all of our fundraising requirements have been met.

*Update -We've began thinning an area of secondary forest for our community sandalwood plantation and have transplanted our first 50 seedlings there. We will need to continue to thin this area and plant some host trees (citrus and Acacia spp.) intermittently throughout the plantation. There are currently only 800 sandalwood seedlings in the nursery and 150 seeds in the germination bed. There are over 1200 sandalwood seedlings currently being grown in private nurseries in the community with poly-bags being funded through the project. We should have many more seedlings in the nursery, however unusually heavy rains in March caused many of the seeds and seedlings rot. Our seed supply is presently exhausted, so we plan to make up for our low numbers during sandalwood’s second seeding in June. We also provided a half kilogram of seed to the Vanuatu Forestry Department, who have had a hard time getting planting material this year as well as a quarter kilo of seed to my old village on Ambae Island.