Malaita the days of the labour trade. There are villages of Malaitans in many provinces, including eight "squatter" settlements that make up about 15 percent of the population of Honiara, on Guadalcanal. Malaitans who had emigrated to Guadalcanal became a focus of the civil war which broke out in 1999, and the Malaita Eagle Force (MEF) was formed to protect their interest, both on Guadalcanal and on their home island. The organization of Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) has contributed to the infrastructure development of the island. Malaita is a thin island, about 102 miles (164 km) long and
Choiseul pigeon to Choiseul as the island hosts no other endemic species, and the pigeon was never linked ecologically with another species on the island. In January 1904 six specimens and an egg were collected by Albert Stewart Meek, a bird collector for Lord Walter Rothschild, near Choiseul Bay on Choiseul. Several local boys told Meek that the pigeon was also present on the nearby islands of Santa Isabel and Malaita. Though Meek did not travel to these islands, he did search for the Choiseul pigeon on the adjacent Bougainville Island, but did not find any evidence of its presence. No other