The turtles came back: one year after the predators left, Samoa's Nu'utele Island is nesting again

Nu'utele Island, an uninhabited speck off the eastern coast of Upolu, holds Samoa's best-preserved tropical forest — but rats and feral pigs brought from elsewhere were eating their way through it. In 2025, Samoa's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, traditional landowners and community volunteers from the Aleipata district, with technical guidance from the charity Island Conservation, began the patient work of removal: more than 130 days of fieldwork across 12 expeditions, ending in May 2026. One year on, the island's answer is everywhere. Sea turtles are nesting on its beaches again after decades of absence. Within a month of the predators going, scientists found active nests of the Shy Ground Dove — Nu'utele holds Samoa's largest remaining population of the rare bird — and Samoan Starlings, found nowhere else on Earth, are nesting too. 'In many areas, native seedlings are carpeting the forest floor,' said project manager Paul Jacques. 'I saw knee-high seedlings growing where forest regeneration had previously been suppressed.' Farming families are even harvesting giant taro again where crops once failed to pigs.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: institutional program