South Malaita Island Province. South Malaita came under effective control of the colonial administration after the Solomon Islands was declared a British Protectorate in 1893. The administration included the collection of taxes from the islanders. During the colonial days, the island was divided by the colonial government and missionary establishments into the "Asimeuri", "Asimae", and "Raroisu'u" districts. Away from Malaita, most people from "Small" or "South" Malaita usually just say the word "South", everyone knows what they mean. People on the island, however, preferred to identify only with members of their extended families, where ties are the strongest, and with members of their
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