The Fate of Crater Mountain: Forest Conservation in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Wild meat is an important resource in Papua New Guinea that has received little attention in terms of planning and management. We report some preliminary results of field work studying offtake of wild game in several communities in the Crater Mountain area. Our results demonstrate and reinforce the conclusion that wild meat is a significant component in people's diets, and hunting is an important activity. Mostly middle-aged men hunt almost every month, leading to provision of wild meat in the area of 20 g/day per person. Their offtake spans a wide diversity of vertebrate species, but only a handful of the larger species comprise the majority of meat consumed because the other species are either small or rarely killed. For all these important species (wild pigs, cassowaries, macropods, cuscuses, ringtails, megapodes, echidnas and bandicoots), our knowledge of basic population parameters is inadequate to formulate even rudimentary management plans. Scientifically-based management is needed, and that need is becoming urgent, because there are indicators that, for at least some of these key resources, offtake is unsustainable and standing stocks can expect to be depleted if appropriate interventions or management cannot be implemented soon. A conservative extrapolation from this study suggests that hundreds of thousands of people in PNG consume millions of animals each year. This offtake probably amounts to tens of thousands of tons of wild meat each year. Depletion of this resource would create a significant financial burden in the parts of PNG where people have the least nutritious diets and the poorest health care. We recommend research priorities that will help avoid the problems that can be anticipated with the continued lack of planning and management