After 150 years of exploitation, the Solomon Islands nearly killed off its sea turtle population. Today, according to a new Plos One study, the nests have doubled, making this the first known recovery for a western Pacific hawksbill rookery.

It started in the 1800s, when Roviana headhunters raided the Arnavons — four small islands in the Manning Strait — for turtle shells, highly prized by whalers. By the 1970s, the turtle population had declined so severely that the government turned the area into a marine sanctuary. In protest, locals burned down a government station and resumed harvesting for the next decade.

In the early 1990s, the Solomon Islands became one of the last countries to ban commercially catching hawksbills. In 1995, the Nature Conservancy helped set up a marine protected area, “run by an improbable cast of characters, including reformed arsonists, poachers and former turtle eaters,” according to its website.

Soon the endangered animals began bouncing back, alongside other species such as giant clams and trochus sea snails. Topside, the locals supplemented their income by collecting seaweed, small-scale farming and making handicrafts for tourists. The initiative inspired other conservation efforts and won the United Nations’ Equator Prize in 2008 for alleviating poverty through conservation.

It takes hawksbills 30 years before they return to nest where they were born. No other beach will do, making preservation efforts crucial. “Since that protective legislation, the threat to the turtles has been greatly reduced, and we’re seeing more turtles living longer lives, meaning they survive to partake in more breeding seasons,” said Richard Hamilton, the study’s lead author and senior Melanesia scientist for the Nature Conservancy.