Since the time I first used aerial walkways suspended like flexible bridges through the rainforest canopy on the expedition Operation Drake in 1978, this part of the forest has become the goal of an adventurous new breed of arboreal naturalist equipped with climbing ropes, micro-light aircraft and even hot-air balloons. What these explorers have been finding has astounded the scientific world and is of great relevance to the forests of the Solomons and other Pacific islands. The sheer abundance of life in the rainforest roof came as a great shock. So many new species have been discovered that the estimate for the total number of insects in the world has been revised from one million to thirty million. Numerous creatures which conduct their whole lives without ever coming down to the ground could be studied at close quarters for the first time. A host of species formerly out of reach, a giant feast of knowledge, is waiting to be discovered, with untold benefits for modern man. In the canopy lies the answer to a crucial scientific question, the secret of the forest's natural ability to reproduce itself.

The fact that the world's tropical rainforests are being destroyed is now well known. In the time it takes you to read this page some two hundred hectares will have gone for ever. this terrifying rate applies to every minute of every day. An area the size of California disappears each year. the forests cannot be regrown in the span of a human lifetime, and they are rarely given the chance to regrow at all. In twenty years most of the world's rich lowland forests will have vanished. In their place will be infertile farmland, uneconomic cattle ranches, and a fragmented and parched scrubland populated by itinerant settlers. the long-term consequences to the planetary ecosystem are unknown, destruction on this scale has not occurred since the dinosaurs vanished from the earth. Warnings of lack of oxygen, atmospheres rowing hotter, changing weather patterns and rises in sea level do little to change attitudes in the countries that own the forests, often hard-pressed for cash to fuel their ailing economies and repay interest on the inter-national loans designed to prop them up. but the immediate human and environmental effects are heart-rending to see, and they are especially acute in the islands of the South Pacific.  

the mountain of Kolombangara that one can see across the bay from Gizo is an illuminating example of the rainforest destruction business. the island is a typically cone-shaped volcano rising to 1,170 metres, and 30 kilometres across at its base. At the top mists swirl about the trees whose branches are draped in moss, sipping water from the damp atmosphere. On lower slopes there is still some forest but it has been extensively logged. the company responsible for the logging operation was Unilever, a British and Dutch multinational with huge oil-palm plantations in the Solomons. The company's timber interests were sub-contracted to the United Africa company, which had extensive lumber operations in West Africa. some countries there have now lost up to 90 per cent of their original forest, with the environmental consequences. UAC created levers Pacific Timbers to exploit the timber resources of the Solomons, and their experiences provide a fascinating case study of the difficulties of reconciling the extraction of timber with the needs of the land and local people.

In 1962, a pilot scheme had been set up in Gizo, when the Solomons were still a British colony. Operations moved in 1967 to Kolombangara, where Unilever owned a leasehold covering three-quarters of the island, most of which was only sparsely inhabited Logging progressed anti-clockwise around the island and then along roads up the ridges, removing all valuable trees along skid tracks, leaving the rest. A fragmented forest remains. the Solomon island Government was supposed to replant, but it has not. the business was profitable by 1970, and employed 600 people. most of the wood was exported to Japan and Australia as raw logs for making into plywood or sawn wood, the quality was not high enough for decorative veneers, and the volume was not sufficient to be processed locally. (This could greatly have increased revenue to the Solomon Islanders, of course.)

At about this time a new religious sect was developing on the much larger nearby island of new Georgia, led by a powerful and charismatic individual known as the 'Holy Mama'. the Christian Fellowship Church, as it was known, established its headquarters at a place it called 'Paradise' in the north of the island. The Church was initially unrecognized by the government, but successful in getting local people to pay their income into its coffers. In return for this, it built schools and redistributed the money to its vassals according to their needs. it soon became very influential. the holy Mama invited Levers Pacific Timbres to extend its logging operation to New Georgia. such an invitation was extremely valuable, for one of the greatest hurdles in any such operation is persuading local landowners to grant access to the land.

Despite the Holy Mama's invitation, Levers Pacific timbers found themselves embroiled in litigation over boundary and ownership claims as they sought to define the timber rights......., who should receive royalties, when and how much. The British Government failed to help, divesting itself of its responsibilities in the region as independence approached. The North new Georgia timber Corporation (NNGTC) was created and, with the help of a Sussex University lecturer, a New Zealand forester and a Fijian lawyer, a fifteen-year deal was struck which was hailed as the 'best in the Pacific' for the local landowners. Then things began to go wrong. The stimulus for the creation of the Christian Fellowship church had been a vision which came to the Holy Mama under a certain coconut tree in 'Paradise'. Inadvertently this was knocked down by the loggers. The Holy Mama took it very badly, and relations soured. World opinion was also on the move. conservationists from the Rainforest Information Centre at Lismore in new south Wales moved into the vacuum, stirring anti-multinational sentiments in the last remaining areas of forest on Kolomgangara claiming that the logged area was a desert, which it was not, though many species may have been greatly endangered, and that the landscape was scarred by landslips, which it was. The growing antagonism spilled over into New Georgia.

NNGTC continued logging at Baroa and began operations at Enoghae. Representatives of a powerful Solomon Islands family had joined the board. They fell out with the church, and funds no longer ended up in Church coffers but went direct to landowners. the church lost influence and became a focus for anti-logging activists claiming local lifestyles would be destroyed and damage to the environment would result from logging, both of which were correct, and that multinationals were bad for the Solomons, which was debatable. Relations quickly worsened. Families of logger were threatened. At daybreak on 27 March 1982 over a hundred men armed with petrol bombs attacked the camp at Enoghae. The trade store was burnt to the ground on its opening day, the employees fled into the bush, machinery was ruined. Unilever has now ceased logging the Solomon islands.  

What does all this mean to the Solomons? Their forests are not now safe. Australian, Japanese, Korean and even Chinese timber companies have been given a new lease of life through the vacuum created by Unilever's departure. Priceless trees are now being removed in a far less controlled manner. Graham Baines, Scientific Adviser to the Solomon Islands Government, told that prior to its departure Unilever was actively doing its best to minimize damaging effects to the environment and that this was a considerable improvement on earlier practices. no such effort were being made by other companies. The loss of revenue to the Solomons should they stop exploiting their timber - which at present rates will be used up within fifteen years - would be considerable. Unilever's logging activities accounted for 15 per cent of the value of all the country's exports. with such influence it is not difficult for major companies to exert pressure for deals which do not always favour host countries, the latter then wake up to the fact that they have sold their best asset for a song. 

Throughout the South Pacific huge areas of forest have already fallen. Many of the lowlands were cleared by the hands of the Melanesians and Polynesians themselves, making gardens to feed their burgeoning populations, but not it is commercial logging which presents the greatest threat to the wild inhabitants of the forests. Because they have evolved in such isolation and because they contains such a high proportion of unique species, the loss of these forests will be felt far more than that of an equivalent area in the great rainforests of Amazonia or South-east Asia would be. The mighty trees cladding the lower slopes of a few Pacific mountains might seem a small p0rice to pay for the development of nations starved of funds, but the cost to their heritage and the global genetic deposit account is higher here than almost anywhere else. Once the unique natural world of one of these isolated islands with its high proportion of endemic species has been destroyed, it cannot be replaced. Something of the uniqueness of the earth will have gone for ever.   

The following day I was greeted by a grinning boatman who arrived at the hotel at dawn saying that the magistrate's canoe was 'broken 'im all buggerup', which meant wither that he wished to obtain yams from his garden, or that his wife was suffering from a spell placed on her by a neighbour, or that the boat engine was indeed not working. It seemed we would be unable to journey through the islands in the fearsome judicial pomp that I had anticipated. by a stroke of luck the missionary's canoe had returned and Nathan once again made himself available to us. In glorious sunshine, Mike McCoy and I set off across the ocean, leaving the island of Kolombangara to our left, and headed north-east in the direction of new Georgia to explore the myriad islets of Roviana Lagoon.

With the dark mountains of new Georgia rising before us and the turbulent waters outside Gizo left behind, we entered a scene of beautiful coral-strewn shallows interspersed with deep-water blues which led through a maze of entrancing small coral islands sprouting like tufts of green jungle for subterranean platforms. Palm trees grew thickly on most of them, and occasionally a simple thatch hut could be seen nestling amongst the trees close to the water's edge. White sand lay like a ribbon gathering up the trees. The waters were, unlike those on the way to Simbo, were as smooth as lass, protected from the Pacific swells b the outer barrier reef. Only the white streak of our canoe's wake disturbed the surface, small white breakers heaved themselves almost reluctantly on to the flat coral shelves, as if the humidity and the stillness would soon force them to give up their struggle.

There is one rough patch of water: Ferguson Passage. It was here that PT 109, captained by the young future President John F. Kennedy, was rammed and cut in half by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri on 1 August 1943. the torpedo boat sank rapidly into the shark-infested waters, leaving Kennedy and eleven other survivors to swim to a small island in Roviana Lagoon. (Today this is known as Plum Pudding Island, a name which accurately describes it and many of its neighbours as well.) further on we approached another small island. This too had been touched by the war, during which it was used for bombing practice. today it is richly covered in mangrove trees and palms: a remarkable recovery. now it is the occasional home of the sea krait, one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. It was this that I have come to visit. Ten fat fruit pigeons exploded out of the treetops with a fusillade of clapping wings as we approached, this was a safer roosting site than the main islands, where they would have to feed in the shadow of shotguns and arrows. A large osprey was quartering the lagoon. I tend to associate the osprey with the cold and Scotland, but in fact it is to be found throughout the world and is one of the largest birds of prey to visit the more distant tropical islands of the Pacific. The sight of one plunging feet first into the sea and emerging with a large, struggling, silvery fish in its talons is unforgettable.

Once we had landed we set about searching the undergrowth and stones for our deadly quarry. Weaver ants bit my toes as i probed amongst the mangrove roots, and some were carrying pieces of sloughed snakeskin, but of the possible owners we could find not a trace. Then I lifted a large and promising stone on the beach and there underneath it was a huge sea krait, striped in black and duck-egg blue. I got such a shock that I dropped the stone back again and beckoned to Mike to come over quickly. the second time we lifted the stone the creature was not in a friendly mood. A sea krait's venom is one of the most toxic animal substances known to man. I had dropped the stone on its tail.   

"Pick it up,' said Mike.

'You must be joking.'

'Quick, don't let it go.' Mike reached forward and captured the snake, grasping it with thumb and forefinger behind its head. His years of experience with reptiles showed.

'Laticauda colubrina,' he announced triumphantly, holding it aloft. 'They're very docile really. They feed mainly on eels and fish which they catch in the sea t night. Local fishermen in several parts of the Pacific swim down and pick them up from the reefs by their tails like bits of rope. Then they swim to the surface and sling them into their canoes, but nobody seems to get bitten even though the snakes slide around their feet all the way home. Most people think they don't bite because their fangs are at the back of their throats. here, take a look at this.' He carefully allowed the snake to open its mouth and a pair of perfectly formed fangs lay exposed and well placed to bite. 'Take it head and tail and I'll get a snap of you.' The snake hissed gently at me as I gingerly took hold of it. Its scales were unlike any I had seen on a snake before. They are smaller than usual on the belly, making the animal less mobile on land, the larger scales of its terrestrial cousins afford a better grip,. Its tail is flattened like a paddle, its coloration lends it protection amongst seaweeds and corals, and it can stay submerged for up to eight hours. The sea has truly become its home.

the species we had found has spread itself all over the tropical world. The females give birth to eggs on land amongst rocks and tree roots. At this time they may cause alarm by entering villages and even attempting to eat fish that have been put out to dry. some sea snakes have adapted even further to the marine environment and produce live young offshore. the powerful venom of sea snakes may have evolved in response to the need to immobilize fish immediately to prevent the snake roam being dragged away or the prey from entering a coral crevice.  The turtle-headed sea snake, Emydocenphalus annulatus, common in Australian waters, specializes in feeding on fish eggs and has no use for fangs, teeth or venom. Other species have evolved to specialize in capturing eels, and have thin bodies from the head to the middle so that they can reach into burrows to seize their prey. In all there are about fifty species of sea snake in the world, twenty-seven of them in Indo-Australian waters. Their number dwindle eastwards to eight at the eastern end of Papua New guinea, to three in Fiji and just one in the central Pacific.

In the south of the Solomon Islands, on an island called Rennell, there is a lake which is home to a very special sea snake. the lagoon, once at the atoll's centre, is now raised on limestone cliffs a hundred metres high. Twenty kilometres long, the lake contains in its brackish waters a species which is not known anywhere else in the world. Thickly growing rainforest covers virtually all the island's surface. It remains one of the least disturbed places in the Pacific and is inhabited by more endemic species than an other island in the Solomons. The Rennell shrikebill, fantail, starling and two species of white-eye are found nowehere else. At night, flying foxes, emerge to forage while by day spectacular white ibis scratch like chickens around the villages. The people here are different from others ihn the Solomons too. they are Polynesians, and they call their snake tugihono.

In 1933, the yacht Zaca visited the island and deposited an American expedition which had Templeton Crocker as Patron. The strange snake which was subsequently collected here was named after him: Laticauda crockeri. mike had been three times to collect more, on two occasions accompanied by Japanese scientists who wished to analyse the proteins in the venom of the creature, useful for pinning down its position in the taxonomic tangle which surrounds sea snakes of the world. It was important to collect the snakes because thee was a threat of bauxite mining in the lake which could adversely affect the population before anything was known about it: a common story in the Pacific. The Rennellese couldn't believe that anyone would fly hundreds of miles to reach their island, then journey for hours by tractor and trailer - the only transport - perched on sacks of taro and sweet potato, then motor fifteen kilometres up the coast by canoe, and hire carriers to transport numerous pieces of equipment for a further half-day hike across treacherous limestone makatea scrub, merely to collect a snake. No, there had to be another motive. The snake must be worth untold riches, the tugihono was being collected for sale in Japan. they must get a piece of the action. they would soon be rich. The assurance that all this effort would secure the collectors no financial reward was met with suspicion. Negotiations for access to the lake had to be handled delicately until a satisfactory payment was agreed upon.

Mike, having secured the help of children from lakeside villages, managed to collect 200 snakes and observe the habits of others beneath the lake surface using scuba gear. The tugihone, it seems, eats a fish called Eleotris fusca with which it shares the lake, while a second sea snake which also lives there, the sea krait i had found on Snake island, turns its nose up at the fish and eats eels. A mystery remains. How did the snakes get into the lake? Wee they trapped there as the island rose out of the sea? Or is there a subterranean connection to the ocean? If so why should tugihono have evolved into a new species while the sea krait has remained so similar to those in the marine world outside Rennell? Perhaps the sea krait is a recent arrival and has not yet had time to change. Being efficient swimmers, sea snakes had no need of land bridges to gain access to the Pacific, so the sea krait has managed to spread througho9ut the scattered islands, far to the west. Another species, Pelamis platurus, lives in the open ocean and does not need access to land at all. It has become the most widespread snake in the world.   

The furious natural filter which has enabled some animals to spread across the Pacific while others have been confined to the homelands where they originally evolved in the west is nowhere more apparent than in the reptiles and amphibians here. In the steep mountains and forests of new Guinea there are twenty-two families of reptiles and amphibians, including long-necked tortoises and sea turtles, crocodiles, numerous lizards, brightly coloured frogs and snakes. In the Solomons, there are only twelve families, the turtles and tortoises had been left behind along with limbless skinks and many of the frogs. In the Fijian islands eight families of reptiles are to be found, followed by the Samoan Island with a mere four. Tahiti, in the Society Islands, only two. Only the geckos, those efficient snappers of flies around tropical light bulbs, and skinks, some of the most widespread lizards of the world, have mad it that far east into the Pacific. one of the most extraordinary to succeed is the huge skink found only in the Solomons. Most skinks rarely exceed ten centimetres in length, but he prehensile-tailed skink, as it is known, is a giant averaging 35 centimetres, and portly with it. It enjoys an arboreal life, dining almost exclusively on the leaves of a vine, Epipremnum pinnatum, which it reaches with the aid of its muscular tail. This is curled around branches for support, a unique ability among skinks. Much of the day is spent snuggled up inside fig trees, whose numerous hollows provide perfect nest holes in which a female may give birth to her single live young. The skinks are rarely seen, tending to emerge after dark to prowl ponderously along the branches.

We continued our explorations from Roviana lagoon, weaving through a maze of islands and channels to Boana Boana (pronounced Wana Wana) Lagoon. Beneath us mottled coral heads sped by almost close enough to touch, noddy terns picked at fragments of life at the sea surface, spinner dolphins coiled out of the sea in a cascade of spray, and a manta ray spread black wings over the deep. We arrived at the village of Munda in time for toasted sandwiches at a thatched rest-house to the accompaniment of chattering cardinal lorikeets in the palms, before pressing on to Nusambanga to obtain permission to inspect an ancient 'preserved' war canoe there. Once our negotiations with the elders were completed, and we were $15 poorer, a boy took us to see the remnants of the islanders' once great head-hunting days, rotting beneath a large thatched roof. The face of the 'Nguzu-Nguzu', inlaid with mother-of-pearl, still clung to the prow of the giant canoe at the waterline to repel 'water fiends' and protect the crew from mischievous waves and dangerous reefs where enemies could destroy them. Before raids to nighbouring islands, sacrifices wee made to the 'Nguzu-Nguzu' and it would be attached to the canoe's prow, cutting the sea surface to the rhythm of a score of powerful warriors digging broad, pointed paddles into the blue swells. The canoe was twenty metres long, built of planks laced together with coconut fibre and caulked with a form of pitch. Seats of bamboo lay broken inside, decorative cowrie shells had long since fallen to the ground. This one had only been built in 1978 as part of the Independence Day Celebrations: it too was now being rapidly forgotten.

The following morning we baulked at rough weather and flew to the Seghe ferry for the journey back to Guadalcanal. From the air the islets in the lagoons below took on a special beauty, scattered across an aquamarine sea streaked with white sand and shimmering with corals just beneath the surface. the journey took us down the south-west coast of New Georgia. I could see the white hull of the Iu-mi-nao ferry steaming past the coast of Rendova island to my right. The knife-edged peaks of Vangunu Island slid past, affording a glimpse of the magnificent lagoons of Marovo behind. Eastwards across a great expanse of sea, we came to the Russell Islands. From here at 7,500 feet I could see almost all the Solomons stretched out below. near coconut plantations, looking like collections of ordered fuzzy pinheads, covered most of the Russell islands, a testament to the importance of Unilever to the nation's economy. A huge tanker was being loaded with coconut oil, squeezed from the copra, which would be made into margarine. Savo Island, still active and another nesting-ground for megapodes, passed below, and we flew down 'the Slot' to the Florida Islands and Tulagi Bay, scene of one of the greatest naval battles of the Second World War. Ahead lay Guadalcanal, and beyond it San Cristobal with the Santa Cruz Islands in the distance.

As far as Santa Cruz the colonization of the Pacific must have been relatively easy. The Solomons had provided an attainable bridge from New Guinea out into the ocean. For man no great navigational skills were required to reach this point. but the further east I travelled, the greater were the ocean gaps, the more treacherous the distances between island groups. What animals, I wondered, had been first to colonize new islands emerging deep in the ocean hundreds - even thousands - of miles away? I was to discover my answers in the sunken wreckages from great sea battles that had once raged here, for the first colonizes of the distant Pacific Islands travelled not across the surface of the sea, but beneath it. In the cockpit of the plane, I noticed a small fly accompanying us on our journey towards Honiara, a colonist for a new age.