O.A.R.S. Releases River of Eden by Filmmaker Pete McBride

 

For the film, McBride traveled into the highlands of Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu 

to explore the Upper Navua River and find out why the locals said “no” to easy money 

from resource extraction, and instead, turned to tourism to fund a conservation area. 

What he discovered was not only one of the most beautiful rivers on 

Earth—a “mini-tropical Grand Canyon”—but a low-impact commercial rafting operation

 in the Upper Navua Conservation Area that has given 

more than $1 million back to local communities in the last 15 years.

The Upper Navua Conservation Area was established in 1998 when Rivers Fiji,

 with the dedicated support of O.A.R.S. president and founder,

 George Wendt, and an unlikely group of local entities including two villages, 

nine mataqalis (land-owning clans), a logging company and a government organization, 

opted for long-term sustainability through tourism. To protect the area’s natural assets,

 the group banded together to set-up a 25-year land lease that precludes logging,

 road building or mining in the ...more