Book Chapter
Conserving Papua New Guinea's forest fauna through community planning
By
Tanya Leary
;
Tanya Leary
NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, PO Box 95, Parramatta NSW 2124, Australia
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Ted Mamu
Ted Mamu
WWF Kikori Integrated Conservation and Development Project, PO Box 8280, Boroko, NCD, Papua New Guinea
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Published:2004
Citation
Tanya Leary, Ted Mamu, 2004. "Conserving Papua New Guinea's forest fauna through community planning", Conservation of Australia's Forest Fauna, Daniel Lunney
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Despite being classified as one of the world's mega-diversity hotspots, the basic biology and ecology of most PNG forest vertebrate species are completely unknown, which hampers sound planning for conservation of PNG's forest fauna. Although almost 70% of PNG still retains its forest cover, PNG supports a surprisingly high proportion of threatened mammals and birds, which are comparable to the proportion of threatened species in Australia - 27% of PNG's mammals and 4% of PNG's birds are considered critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable compared with 22% and 5% respectively of Australia's mammals and birds. Degradation and loss of habitat by the partial or total removal of forest cover (from clear-fell logging, selective logging and clearing for shifting agriculture and oil palm plantations) is the most significant threat currently posed to PNG's forest fauna. Hunting may also pose a threat for some of the larger, highly sort after game species, such as tree kangaroos and cassowaries. An overview is provided of PNG's legislation for protected areas development and we outline our experiences in the facilitation of community planning for Wildlife Management Area establishment and management by local landowners in the Mt Bosavi area of Southern Highlands Province. For Wildlife Management Areas, the ownership of the land, the development of management rules and the enforcement of management rules remains in the hands of the customary landowner. The participatory community planning process that we developed to try to overcome some of the factors which have led to failure of WMAs elsewhere in PNG is outlined in this paper. In our opinion the only successful conservation areas in PNG will be those developed on land still held in customary ownership by landowners committed to conservation. We also believe that the planning process we developed can be used by local communities (with minor alterations) to undertake sustainable land and resource-use planning that can achieve broad scale conservation outcomes that do not necessarily result in the establishment of protected areas. While establishment of conservation areas by committed landowners may be part of the answer to achieving conservation of PNG's forest fauna, we also highlight research priorities which will aid the assessment of the effectiveness of conservation areas, and help to determine what other off-reserve measures may need to be taken to ensure effective conservation of PNG's fauna. We believe that the key to answering some of the fundamental biological and ecological questions necessary for the adequate conservation of PNG's fauna lies in building the capacity of PNG biologists and in securing adequate funds for them to undertake long-term research
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