EARLY in the Trust Territory period, local experts and foreign biologists working in Palau’s forestry programs discovered that wild pigeons and fruit bats were the chief carriers of seeds from many species of trees in one area of the jungle, which were dropped and “planted” in other parts of the island. That finding resulted in a legislation prohibiting the hunting of wild pigeons and other wild birds in Palau. That ban should never be lifted because the pigeons and all the wild bird species in Palau are important for the healthy growth of trees and vegetation in our jungles and the in the rock islands
I remember a time in the Sixties when the jungles of Babeldaob were alive with the sights and sounds of all kinds of wild birds, including pigeons and fruit bats, feeding on the rich harvest provided by many different species of trees in the thick jungles. If you were walking on the crest of a hill back then, you could see overhead constant flights of pigeons and fruit bats flying from one feeding area to another. These sights and sounds began to disappear during the decade of the Seventies, and that is why the Palau Legislature enacted that law prohibiting the killing of wild birds. That ban plus the Constitutional ban on firearms prevented our pigeon and fruit bat species from disappearing completely in the jungles of Babeldaob and from the rock islands.In recent years the various endemic trees in the jungles and forests of Babeldaob and the rock islands on which Palau’s wild bird species depend upon for their survival have not been bearing fruits at their regular seasons and many of them have not even begun producing flowers, which is the usual sign that that fruiting season has begun. In the old days the trees standing along what is now the Compact Road would be heavily laden with young fruits, which would be ripe for all kinds of birds, including Pigeons and fruit bats, to feast on in the summer months. Nowadays one could barely see fruits on EMPTUI, BLACHEOS, KELACHARM, BKAU, ELANGEL, and many other endemic species of trees which provide all the fruit foods for the birds of Palau. No wonder we no longer see huge flocks of wild birds, including pigeons and fruit bats, flying over the hills of Babeldaob from one feeding ground to the next. Could the people in our Conservation Society conduct an in-depth study into the situation to see what is happening so that an effective solution to the disappearance of our wild bird species could be devised and implemented before we lose forever our precious wild bird species? Future generations will not forgive us if they become extinct.The other islands of Micronesia did not have the type of pigeon that thrived so well in Palau. In the fifties and the sixties, there was a government program to capture juvenile Palauan pigeons to send to Yap and Kosrae to establish the species on those islands. The project had some success because the “Belochel” can be found today on those two islands. It would be the height of irony if in the future, the “Belochel” could only be found in Yap and Kosrae and not in Palau, which was their original home.
