The New Guinea Challenge - Development and Conservation in Societies of Great Cultural and Biological diversity
COMMERCIALLY IMPORTANT SEA CUCUMBERS OF THE WORLD
Escalating anthropogenic impacts on tropical biodiversity have increased the vulnerability of endemic species. Selective harvesting of species is one of the major threats to birds and mammal species in the tropics. Many indigenous cultures, however, have long established cultural associations with certain species. The hunting and trade of species have been mainly for subsistence and socio-cultural ties within their communities.
Hunting is a major driver of biodiversity loss, but a systematic large-scale estimate of hunting-induced defaunation is lacking. We synthesized 176 studies to quantify huntinginduced declines of mammal and bird populations across the tropics. Bird and mammal abundances declined by 58% (25 – 76 %) and by 83% (72 – 90%) in hunted compared to unhunted areas. Bird and mammal populations were depleted within 7 and 40 km from hunters’ access points (roads and settlements). Additionally, hunting pressure was higher in areas with better accessibility to major towns where wild meat could be traded.
Papua New Guinea is committed to the establishment of a network of marine protected areas
to fulfil national and international commitments. In order to assist this, the conservation
priority areas analysis identified a range of areas of high conservation interest in the PNG
marine environment, based on the principles of comprehensiveness, adequacy,
representation and resilience (CARR). The analysis collated available national-scale data on
biodiversity features and biodiversity surrogates.
DEC
Conservation needs asessment for PNG
Papua New Guinea (PNG) is committed to the establishment of a network of protected areas to fulfil national and international commitments.
NATIONAL BIODIVERSITY STRATEGY AND ACTION PLAN
WWF PNG Ecoregions
Conservation Status of Marine Biodiversity in Oceania.
A conservation planning study in Papua New Guinea (PNG) addresses the role of
biodiversity surrogates and biodiversity targets, in the context of the trade-offs required
for planning given real-world costs and constraints. In a trade-offs framework, surrogates
must be judged in terms of their success in predicting general biodiversity
complementarity values – the amount of additional biodiversity an area can contribute to
a protected set. Wrong predictions of low complementarity (and consequent allocation of
This report describes some of the challenges for biodiversity planning arise from a study in Papua New Guinea, but apply equally to biodiversity planning in general. These are;
* the best use of available data for providing biodiversity surrogate information
* the integration of representatives and persistence goals into the area prioritization process
* implications for the implementation of a conservation plan over time.
10 paged document outlining the development and conservation in societies of great cultural and biological diversity in New Guinea of PNG. This was published in 2003
The Conservation Needs Assessment (CNA) for Papua New Guinea was requested by the government of Papua
New Guinea and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The CNA was implemented by the Biodiversity Support Program, a USAID-funded consortium of World Wildlife Fund, World Resources Institute, and The Nature Conservancy, in collaboration with local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), museums, and academic institutions.
The island of New Guinea harbours one of the world’s largest tracts of intact tropical forest, with 41% of its land
Tonda Wildlife Management Area on the southern extremity of Papua New Guinea’s border with Indonesia is PNG’s largest and oldest conservation area and its only Ramsar site. For over 20 years it has been managed by a committee of indigenous leaders drawn from 20 village communities. While this group has provided strong local level protection of land, lack of support to the committee has meant that the full potential of community management has not been realised. Furthermore threats on a regional and international scale cannot be easily
dealt with by current community institutions.
Papua New Guinea (PNG) is committed to the establishment of a network of protected areas to fulfil
national and international commitments. The primary objective of this assessment was to provide an updated
set of conservation priorities by integrating Terrestrial and Marine Programme of Works on Protected Areas
2005 Ok Tedi CMCA village survey for the Mineral Policy Institute