The Solomon Islands Rangers Association (SIRA) today signed a landmark partnership agreement with WWF-Solomon Islands to work together to support communities to better manage their natural resources.
The signing happened at the USAID OurFish OurFuture funded Sea Cucumber Dialogue held at Solomon Islands National University this week with representatives from across Melanesia.
Dr. Mark Drew, Director WWF-Pacific says that this agreement will enable a more coordinated approach to monitoring and compliance for improved natural resource management in Solomon Islands.
“WWF is the first conservation organisation to formally sign a memorandum of understanding with SIRA,” Drew said.
“It is a pleasure to be working with an organisation that is also committed to supporting improved management of our precious natural resources by local resource owners,” he added.
“This agreement will take advantage of the complementary institutional capabilities of both organisations in the development and implementation of separate and joint programmes.
“WWF has been supporting communities to improve their marine resource management for many years now and this partnership is another step forward in making this work sustainable.”
SIRA is a not-for-profit organisation set up in 2014 to raise awareness about and support community rangers in Solomon Islands.
SIRA was Oceania’s first rangers’ association outside of Australia. In 2021 SIRA was awarded full membership of the International Rangers Federation.
They are a membership based organisation with currently 150 ranger members.
Many of the community rangers working in WWF community-based fisheries management sites are already members of SIRA.
The principal role of SIRA is to support local village rangers, wardens, monitors and community facilitators, engaged by community based organisations to improve their skills and knowledge and have good communication links among themselves and with other national, regional and international rangers’ organisations, institutions, and donor agencies.
SIRA does not engage in law enforcement but its role is to encourage compliance with national and provincial fisheries regulations and with community-based fisheries management rules and to gather information for reporting breaches of regulations and rules.
“We are working towards empowering rangers working in community-based conservation around the Solomon Islands to improve their skills and support their communities to understand the status of their natural resources and implement management rules to protect and sustainably benefit from them,” said Felix Naitoro, Vice President of SIRA.
The main objective of this agreement is to provide a framework of cooperation between WWF-Solomon Islands and SIRA.
The first activities the two organisations plan to implement together are improved community led turtle monitoring and the implementation of the SIRA Ranger Field Guide across the sites where WWF currently works.
This will build on the support being provided by WWF through the USAID funded OurFish OurFuture project to finalise a review of the SIRA strategic plan and administration policies and procedures.
BANAR CAPTION: Felix Naitoro, Vice President of SIRA and Dr Mark Drew, Director WWF Pacific signing the MoU in Honiara today.