We live in Takae - a community located in the middle of the beautiful
Yanbaru forests in northern Okinawa Island. With approximately 150
residents living together, we enjoy our lives and raise our children
among singing birds and insects, murmuring streams, and thesounds of the breeze in the leaves of the trees.
At the same time, this forests have been used for military purposes.
The Northern Training Area (Jungle Warfare Training Center of thethe U.S. Marines) has occupied 78.33km2 land here for over 50years. Military training with low-level helicopter flights has been
regularly conducted. Therefore we have been facing noise pollution
and the ever-present danger of helicopter crashes.
In 2006, we discovered the news that 6 new-helipads were plannedin the very vicinity of Takae.
We demanded an explanation of the construction plan from theJapanese government’ s Okinawa Defense Bureau. Without giving
us a satisfactory reason why the helipads were to be built, theBureau forcibly started the construction process.
We, the residents, thus started direct action against the construction
by staging a sit-in with a small number of people.
There is the Jungle Warfare Training Center of U.S. Marine Corps (7,500 ha) in the Yanbaru area – theNortheast mountainside of Higashi and Kunigami villages, Okinawa. Subtropical natural forest and mountainstreams remain, and the area provides a habitat for over 4,000 species of wildlife. 11 animals and 12 plants arefound only in the Yanbaru area. A large number of Threatened Species are listed in the Red List, 188 species inthe Okinawan Red List, and 177 in the Red List of the Environment Ministry. The Jungle Warfare Training
Center and the Yanbaru Forest around the center have an important natural environment and biodiversity including numerous endemic, endemic subspecific, and threatened species.

(c) Akino Miyagi(c)T.Hanashiro(c)Takashi Morizumi

In its efforts to have Ryukyu Islands registered as a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site, the Okinawa
prefectural government promotes the Yanbaru forest as one of the island’ s most important areas. TheJapanese government also announced its intentions to designate the forest as a national park just before theopening of COP10.

Location of theexisting helipads

Area of the partial
return of the NTA

Kunigami
Village

Kunigami
Village

Kunigami
VillageOgimi Village

Ogimi Village

Ogimi Village
Higashi Village

Location ofthe helipads afterthe partial return

Takae

Existing helipads
New construction site of helipads
Northern Training Area of U.S. Forces
Area of the partial return of the NTA

Higashi Village

Takae

Higashi Village

Takae

Today, however, 30% of the forest is used as a U.S. military training area,
and there already exist 22 U.S. military helipads in the area. The
construction of the new helipads will certainly create considerable danger
and further impact the Yanbaru forest and Takae’ s community.
It should be emphasized that the base construction is not only
destroying biodiversity; they are also violating the life and the rights of us
who are in fact stewards of biodiversity and practitioners of sustainableliving. The Japanese government’ s Okinawa Defense Bureau isproceeding with projects in a manner coercive to the local people andtheir supporters who oppose the projects, while ignoring their calls for
dialogue and evading consensus-building.

The Okinawa Defense Bureau has also filed SLAPP lawsuits (Strategic Lawsuit Against PublicParticipation) against us and our supporters who have been carrying out peaceful protests. In our view,
these lawsuits disregard the spirit of the CBD, which recognizes the importance of local communities inconserving biodiversity. Moreover, as recognized by the International Indigenous Forum on
Biodiversity, Okinawa is a land of indigenous people: the helipad construction in Takae is a repeat of
the “history of deprivation” for Okinawan people and it clearly undermines the CBD.
It should also be stressed that these two projects defy more than halfof the 20 Aichi Targets. Especially, they are impediments to achieving
Strategic goal C Target 12: “By 2020 the extinction of known
threatened species has been prevented and their conservation status,
particularly of those most in decline, has been improved andsustained” and Strategic goal E Target 18: “By 2020, the traditional
knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local
communities relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of
biodiversity, and their customary use of biological resources, arerespected, subject to national legislation and relevant international
obligations, and fully integrated and reflected in the implementation of
the Convention with the full and effective participation of indigenous
and local communities, at all relevant levels” .
Our lives are threatened by the construction of these helipads.
If construction is completed, it will destroy not only the naturalenvironment, but also our living directly.
We need help from all over the world.
Please support our movement.
No Helipad Takae Resident Society(c) Takashi Morizumi*Participate in the movement by sitting in with us!
You can see and feel what is really going on in Takae.
Contact with "No Helipad Takae Resident Society"e-mail:info@nohelipadtakae.org
Postal Address :Takae 85-12, Higashi Village, Okinawa JAPANzip 905-1201
TEL and FAX:+81-980-51-2688

http://takae.ti-da.net/