Preserving fragile eco-system

At Issue: The contamination of our precious water resources, pollution and overfishing in our lagoon.

Our View: This responsibility isn’t solely DEQ’s, it should be shared by the entire community.

Someone once remarked that we only get to appreciate what we have when we lose it altogether. How true! But it need not be this way.

Most people despise the process–getting from A-Z–a process involving expert research and reasoned analysis. More often than not, the convenience of individual members of this community is fueled by the lack of personal responsibility to pitch-in. We fall prey to the comfort of convenience and expediency over the more responsible manner of disposing solid wastes. It’s the newly acquired dump attitude that have taken root in modern day NMI.

At the same time, we teach our children the essence of protecting our fragile ecosystem. However, we have basically said one thing and do the exact opposite. These worthy instructions about protecting our environment are left as purely daily lessons. We fail ourselves by violating (while our children watch in awe) what we have taught them about the importance of a clean environment. We have lost ground in our social responsibility but equally gained mañana catches in the sea of hypocrisy.

However, not all hope is lost of ridding ourselves of our wonderful juvenile attitude of “la mañana”. At least there’s a measure that would protect reef fish in and around Managaha Island. The same measure would protect precious coral in our lagoon, a lot of which have been destroyed by innocent tourists who had no inkling of the devastating effects of removal and destruction. Don’t blame them, blame the tour operators.

The runoffs originating from estuaries is exacerbated by the increase in road paving. They end up in our lagoon where they pile into silt killing fish habitat quicker than meets the eye. DEQ has taken positive steps to correct this obvious neglect of decades past. Then there’s the infamous dumping of PCBs in some of our villages not to mention used motor oil and assorted chemicals disposed inappropriately that have contaminated our water lenses. The unscrupulous attitude of disposing toxic oil and chemicals consistently shows the lack of personal responsibility by those who chance employing their reckless attitude.

For a fragile island ecosystem, it becomes vitally important that we begin anew in our collective efforts to protect what little we have so we put teeth to our claim to conserve and preserve the natural beauty of paradise for posterity. We can’t simply “Leave It To Beaver” because Beaver is in each of us. We have to be proactive in the protection of our precious and fragile ecosystem. Let’s do it for our own good and for our children too. Si Yuus Maase`!