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  [California Study Center]

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PITCAIRN ISLANDS STUDY CENTER, Pacific Union College, Angwin, California USA.

Herbert Ford, 559-592-0980, 559-732-0313.

PITCAIRN ISLAND ENTERS INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS WORLD

                        ANGWIN (Napa County) Calif., July 30, 2004—Tiny Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific Ocean is entering the international business world in a serious way, according to a report reaching the Pitcairn Islands Study Center located on the campus of Pacific Union College here.

                        Under the leadership of the island’s Auckland-based commissioner, Leslie Jaques, 17 business projects are budgeted this year for the little one-mile-wide by two-miles-long island which was made famous by the mutiny on H.M.S. Bounty in 1789.

                        The projects include investigation of commercial fishing possibilities within the island group’s 200-mile exclusion zone. In addition to inhabited Pitcairn, the group includes uninhabited Henderson, Oeno and Ducie islands.

                        Also under development is Pitcairn’s honey production.

                        “We are already talking with a chain of gourmet stores in Japan who have offered to take all the honey we produce,” Jaques recently told the 50 people on the island.

                        He said talks are under way with the ministry of tourism in French Polynesia about a joint venture tourist operation on Pitcairn and perhaps other of the islands.

                        “There are seventeen projects in all included in this year’s budget, and many of these are now at the stage where they need to be developed on Island with the benefit of local expertise,” Jaques told the Pitcairners.

                        In recent years Pitcairn has lost a number of its inhabitants due to the lack of jobs, with most of those leaving going to New Zealand. Island leaders have long felt that if jobs were available on Pitcairn many of those who have left would return to their island home.

                        Most present island income derives from the sale of home-crafted curios, postage stamps, dehydrated fruits and vegetables, and honey.

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