American Samoa is getting a piece of a $1 million pie that that the Department of Interior is making available to the US insular areas for protection of natural and cultural resources.
Interior Acting Assistant Secretary for Insular Areas Nikolao Pula announced that $1,003,787 will be awarded to the insular areas to support a wide variety of initiatives.
These include watershed management, GIS skills development, radar monitoring and marine protected areas surveillance, youth education in conservation management, and environmental law-enforcement training.
Pula said,“People in the islands depend on the strength and viability of their natural resources for sustenance, and physical and socio-economic well-being.”
The American Samoa Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources will receive $94,906.
The funds will go towards efforts for the preservation of natural and cultural resources in the Faga’alu, Vatia, and Nu’uuli watersheds.
Overfishing, climate change, land-based pollution, and population pressure have been identified as the four primary threats to natural resources in these areas.
The funds will also be used to continue development of rain gardens and other best practices to manage storm water runoff by collaborating heavily with federal, territorial, and academics as well as village councils.
Other uses of the funding is GIS mapping training and certification to better inform management of priorities across watersheds, rain gardens, marine protected areas, managed and unmanaged areas on the island, and set up integrated radar systems to monitor and deter poaching in the Tutuila Marine Protected Areas.
American Samoa also qualified for the National Coral Reef Management Fellowship Program which was awarded $200,000 for 2017-2018.
The funds go towards placing a Coral Fellow in each of the four U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, the USVI, and the CNMI.
The collaborative fellowship program, which is administered by the National Coral Reef Institute of Nova Southeastern University in Florida seeks to build next generation leaders and capacity for effective local coral reef ecosystem management.
NOAA will provide an additional $400,000 for travel, training, and development of the fellows and provide for additional fellows to be placed in Hawaii, Florida and Puerto Rico.
