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Given the economic and cultural dependence on the marine environment in Oceania and a rapidly expanding human population, many marine species populations are in decline and may be vulnerable to extinction from a number of local and regional threats.

This is an economic evaluation of the compensation to which Papua New Guinea’s customary landholders -
wrongly dispossessed through Special Agricultural Business Leases (SABL) - might be entitled if they successfully
sued the government. The evaluation involves the calculation of commercial loss but also, and probably more importantly, economic equivalent value loss. The framework identifies the relevant heads of value (not just priced
transactions) and demonstrates appropriate methods for valuation. It does not pretend to be a price calculator

On the 25th of January this year, Papua New Guinea’s Post Courier newspaper reported that the National Court had just overturned a decision made by a provincial land court magistrate in 2006. The decision in question was meant to
resolve a dispute between two members of a Huli clan about the ownership of land in the Moran petroleum development licence area, which is one of eight licence areas that now form part of the PNG Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project. But it seems that the magistrate ‘mistakenly’ granted one of the disputing parties.

In recent years, one of the oldest asset classes in investment – land – has become an issue of international concern and scrutiny. Land acquisitions are being announced at a breakneck pace1 as companies look to produce more food, wood fiber, minerals and energy.

Papua New Guinea is linguistically and culturally the most diverse country in the world. PNG’s languages, as the repositories of ethnobiological knowledge and culture, play a crucial role in biodiversity conservation. The current trends in cultural, social and economic changes in PNG are threatening the survival of languages and ethnobiological knowledge, but there are very limited studies done to assess the suspected decline of indigenous language and ethnobiological knowledge of Papua New Guinea.

This study evaluates the factors affecting community mangrove restoration at nine sites in eight ifferent coastal villages of Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. Between June 2012 and April 2014, more than 8,400 mangrove seedlings of five species were planted on both restoration sites and sites with no history of mangroves. The timing of the plantings was uncontrolled, and some communities continued haphazard planting between the two periods.

Treefall gaps play important roles tropical rainforest ecology. But studies increasingly rely on models, remote sensing, and few intensively studied research sites, mostly in the Neotropics. Here we studied the basic parameters of gap dynamics- size, causes and frequency of treefall gaps in a lower montane primary forest on the southern flank of the central range of Papua New Guinea.

Forest carbon emission mitigation schemes seek to protect tropical forest, combat effects of climate change, and offer potential cash and development opportunities. Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDDþ) projects based on a foundation of accurate carbon stock assessment provide such an opportunity for Papua New Guinea. The objective of this study was to quantify the carbon stock of the central forests of Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, and identify factors that underpin any observed variation within it.

We investigated traditional coral reef management practices at Ahus Island, Manus Province, Papua New Guinea, to evaluate their social role in the community and potential to conserve reef ecosystems. For generations, Ahus Islanders have prohibited spear and net fishing within six delineated areas of their reef lagoon. One to three times per year, fish are briefly harvested from the restricted areas to provide food for ceremonial occasions.

In an effort to deliver better outcomes for people and the ecosystems they depend on, many governments and civil society groups are engaging natural resource users in collaborative management arrangements (frequently called comanagement). However, there are few empirical studies demonstrating the social and institutional conditions conducive to successful comanagement outcomes, especially in small-scale fisheries.

This study explores the social, economic, and ecological context within which communities in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia use adaptive coral reef management. We tested whether periodic closures had positive effects on reef resources, and found that both the biomass and the average size of fishes commonly caught in Indo-Pacific subsistence fisheries were greater inside areas subject to periodic closures compared to sites with year-round open access.

The coral reefs of Papua New Guinea are among the most species diverse in the world, support an important artisanal fishery, but lack an effective national conservation programme. Increased commercialization, population growth, promotion of fisheries development projects, and the live reef food fish trade are expected to increase demand for the country’s reef fish.

Small-scale fisheries provide many benefits to coastal communities in the Indo-Pacific region, including food security, improved nutrition and cash income. However, increasing engagement with the global economy is exerting additional pressure on marine resources and opportunities to engage in alternative livelihoods are often limited by remoteness and a lack of land-based farming opportunities.

Tambu is a well respected concept in Melanesian societies and represents a periodic cultural restriction on harvesting for the purpose of fulfilling customary obligations and restocking resources. As a result it has been suggested as the basis for conservation and sustainability in Melanesia. One species subject to tambu management is the Admiralty cuscus (Spilocuscus kraemeri), an arboreal marsupial endemic to Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, where it is a major source of terrestrial protein for forest-dwelling villagers.

Across the globe, many nations have gone through a period of unmanaged wildlife consumption characterized by massive population crashes and extinction of vertebrate species. The dramatic declines of useful animal resources because of this over-consumption have often been followed by a determined effort to regulate and manage wildlife consumption, often too late to avoid extinction and even more often too late to enable the resource population to recover to harvestable levels.

Artisanal fishing on coral reefs in Papua New Guinea is an important livelihood activity that is managed primarily at the level of local communities. Pockets of overexploitation exist and are expected to increase with plans for increased commercialization

Long-beaked echidnas (Zaglossus), which are endemic to New Guinea, are the largest and least-studied of the 3 extant genera of monotremes. Zaglossus is listed as endangered by the World Conservation Union and data regarding the natural history of long-beaked echidnas are critical to efforts to protect these animals. However, no detailed studies of the ecology of this genus have been published.

Numerous New Guinea birds, mostly psittaciforms and columbiforms, have been recorded feeding on soil. This study documents geophagy in the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area (CMWMA) in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. We present the first documented case of geophagy in the palm cockatoo Probosciger aterrimus and in up to 11 other species.