, rangers from the Helen Reef Resource Management Program were starting their day, tidying up around their station and checking spearguns for afternoon fishing, when they heard a motor and soon spotted an unknown vessel. This could only mean trouble. They would have been notified about a legitimate craft coming to Hotsarihie, as Helen Reef is known to the Hatohobei people, the traditional stewards of the area.
The fishermen later came back with rice, beer, and $20,000 cash, plus the promise of wiring an additional $30,000. Split evenly among the team, the total bribe amounted to a ranger’s annual salary. The poachers had assumed their money would work. But for Hercules Emilio, the team’s senior conservation officer, rejecting the money was a no-brainer.
In 2020 rangers Tony Chayam , Petra Tkel , and Hercules Emilio refused a $50,000 bribe and helped apprehend illegal fishermen from China on Hotsarihie, a protected reef in southwestern Palau. Within Palau’s treasure chest of biodiversity, Hotsarihie is a precious jewel. The atoll’s lagoon, channel, and reef flats support an array of hard and soft corals, turtles, sea snails, giant clams, fish, sharks, and seabirds.
In the 1990s, fishing boats from Indonesia and the Philippines greedily raided the reef using dynamite, cyanide, and large nets to harvest sea cucumbers, sea snails, giant clams, sharks, groupers, and turtles.