location: Oceania

location: Oceania

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Conservationists welcome new PNG Protected Areas Act — but questions remain
- In February 2024, Papua New Guinea’s parliament passed the Protected Areas Bill, first introduced two decades ago, into an act, which aims to establish a national system of protected areas to achieve the conservation target of protecting 30% of PNG’s territory by 2030.
- The act lays out a legal framework for working with customary landowners in the country to earmark protected areas, establishes regulations to manage these areas and provides provisions for alternative livelihoods to forest-dependent communities.
- The act also mandates the establishment of a long-term Biodiversity and Climate Task Fund, which communities can access to implement their management plans and conservation objectives.
- While conservationists say the act is a good step toward protecting biodiversity, they raise concerns about its implementation and whether the promised benefits of protected areas will reach landowning communities.

Communities worry anew as PNG revives seabed mining plans
- Coastal communities in Papua New Guinea’s New Ireland province rely on the sea for their livelihoods and culture.
- But Solwara 1, a resurgent deep-sea mining project aimed at sourcing metals from the ocean floor, could threaten their way of life, community leaders and activists say.
- They also say they haven’t been properly consulted about the potential pros and cons of Solwara 1, and government and company leaders have provided little information to the public about their plans.
- A coalition of leaders, activists and faith-based organizations called the Alliance of Solwara Warriors is opposing the project in Papua New Guinea and abroad, and calling for a permanent ban on seabed mining in the country’s waters.

PNG communities resist seabed mining: Interview with activist Jonathan Mesulam
- The government of Papua New Guinea appears poised to approve Solwara 1, a long-in-development deep-sea mining project in the country’s waters.
- However, PNG has signed onto several seabed mining moratoria, and scientists have urged caution until more research can determine what the effects of this practice will be.
- Proponents say the seafloor holds a wealth of minerals needed for batteries, especially for electric vehicles, and thus are vital for the transition away from fossil fuels.
- But coastal communities in PNG’s New Ireland province have mounted a fierce resistance to Solwara 1, arguing that it could damage or destroy the ecosystems that provide them with food and are the foundation of their cultures.

New funding boosts AI-enabled wildlife identification project in Australia
- An artificial intelligence project to identify native species from camera-trap images in Australia has received a A$750,000 ($492,000) grant from the government.
- The project by the conservation nonprofit Australian Wildlife Conservancy has already trained the AI model to identify 44 species from camera-trap images, from native animals such as kangaroos and dingoes, and invasive ones like cats and foxes.
- With the new funding, the team at AWC aims to scale up the model to be able to identify 120 species; the model can also be applied to alert land managers about invasive predators that are harmful to native species.
- Camera traps continue to be one of the most widely used technologies for biodiversity surveys, but the analysis of the thousands of images generated by camera traps remains a major bottleneck.

Activists urge Australia to end lucrative links to Myanmar junta’s mines
- Pro-democracy activists urge Australian government action against domestic companies they say are funding Myanmar’s military junta, citing environmental and human rights abuses in the country’s mining sector.
- Two advocacy groups criticized the slow pace of Australian sanctions, calling on Canberra to follow Western counterparts in targeting state-owned natural resource enterprises there.
- A recent Justice For Myanmar report identifies Australian-linked companies allegedly supporting the junta through mining activities and related services, prompting demands for coordinated international action.

In PNG, researchers record 9 new species of predatory hermaphroditic land snails
- A new study describes nine new species of land snails lurking in leaf litter across PNG. The discovery results from an extensive countrywide survey undertaken after a gap of 60 years.
- The newly identified snails, all grouped under the genus Torresiropa, are predatory hermaphrodites and about the size of a fingernail. They are restricted to single islands or mountain ranges.
- The discovery adds to the little-known biodiversity of mollusks in the country, and scientists expect to find many more new species in the future.
- As logging, road construction and other human activities threaten the rainforests of PNG, experts warn that human-mediated activities could drive many land snail species to extinction before they are even known to science.

‘Cowboys’ and intermediaries thrive in Wild West of the carbon market
- A host of different players have crowded into the voluntary carbon trade as its value has grown.
- Motivated by the potential for profit, a concern for climate change or some combination of the two, these companies and organizations link the credits generated by projects, such as those that fit in the forest conservation scheme known as REDD+, with buyers, often companies and individuals in the Global North looking to compensate for their climate impacts.
- Some groups say they help shoulder the burden of tasks like marketing so that the communities and project staff on the ground can focus on the “change-making work.”
- But others, sometimes called “carbon cowboys,” seem interested in the money to be made from trading carbon. Some have faced allegations that they don’t bring the necessary expertise to their work, or that they don’t adequately inform local communities about the intended projects and the potential pitfalls.

Some hemp with your wine? Study shows better soil, potentially flavors from intercropping
- A new study tests whether hemp is an effective plant for intercropping between wine grapes to increase soil health and potentially add another cash crop to vineyards.
- Vintners planted hemp with other cover crops on a vineyard in New Zealand, and found that while hemp was a robust grower, it didn’t compete with grape vines for water, even in dry conditions.
- Surprisingly, the wine made from grapes grown near hemp had a delicious, complex flavor profile, but researchers say more tests are needed to see if hemp was the driving factor.
- The researchers plan to investigate further whether hemp is an effective plant for intercropping to improve vineyard soil health and carbon storage.

Vast new MPAs are PNG’s first to be co-managed by Indigenous communities
- On Nov. 12, the government of Papua New Guinea declared two large new marine protected areas totaling more than 16,000 square kilometers (6,200 square miles) that reportedly triple the country’s marine area under protection.
- The announcement capped a six-year effort led by U.S.-based NGO Wildlife Conservation Society to consult with local communities about how to set up the MPAs to curtail the harvest of threatened species and restore the health of fisheries that people have depended on for generations.
- The NGO called the announcement “one of the first and most ambitious community-led MPA wins” since countries agreed last year to protect 30% of land and sea area by 2030 under the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity.
- However, some observers note the potential problems that could arise from foreign-led conservation in an area experiencing poverty, conflict, and minimal government support, and there is widespread agreement that the MPAs’ success will depend on securing financing for enforcement.

Reef damage from 2024 Olympics surfing venue is avoidable (commentary)
- Parisians are not the only ones criticizing the 2024 Olympic Games: residents of Tahiti in French Polynesia are concerned about negative impacts on its celebrated reef from a surfing event venue being built in Teahupo’o.
- A coalition of fishermen, farmers, surfers, and citizens of Teahupo’o have started a petition and have held at least one protest in hopes of forcing Olympic organizers to change their plans.
- “If Paris 2024 intends to follow through with its promises to ‘bring about a new era’ of sustainability in the sporting world, it must take action to ensure that the Teahupo’o reef is left undamaged for its marine and human populations,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Logging, road construction continue to fuel forest loss in Papua New Guinea
- Papua New Guinea boasts the third largest rainforest in the world and houses about 7% of the planet’s biodiversity, including threatened species found nowhere else in the world.
- In recent years, fraudulent practices in the logging and agriculture industry have resulted in massive forest loss across the country while road network expansion plans threaten to further fragment forests and open them up for resource exploitation.
- Satellite data and imagery show logging activity on the rise in PNG, particularly in the province of Oro.
- Conservationists and officials say forest laws must be tightened in PNG and local communities included in decision-making to reduce forest loss, while incentivizing communities to conserve the remaining forests.

Lethal or not? Australia’s beaches are a crucible for shark control methods
- For decades, Australia’s east-coast states have attempted to keep beachgoers safe from sharks by deploying entangling shark nets and culling species deemed dangerous.
- Recent figures published by the state of New South Wales reveal that almost all the animals caught in the nets during the 2022/23 summer season were “nontarget” species, including turtles, dolphins and endangered shark species, the majority of which died due to entanglement in the nets.
- In contrast, the west-coast state of Western Australia has abandoned a shark culling regime in favor of nonlethal alternatives, such as drone monitoring and “eco barriers,” swimming enclosures that keep marine life out but do not risk entanglement.
- Despite calls from environmental groups to exclusively adopt nonlethal technologies, shark control programs are continuing in both New South Wales and its northern neighbor, Queensland, during the 2023/24 Australian summer.

Australia crackdown on climate protesters grows amid fight against gas project
- The Indigenous ancestral land of Murujuga in Western Australia is home to the world’s oldest and largest collection of petroglyphs, which would be partially destroyed by the country’s biggest fossil fuel project, the Burrup Hub, owned by Woodside Energy.
- As the company argues more gas is needed, direct action tactics by protesters, like releasing non-toxic stench gas or painting on art, have erupted across the state, as well as crackdowns by the police who have begun imposing the strongest form of charges on activists — some facing up to 20 years in prison.
- This is on trend with a general increasing intolerance toward environmental protesters in Australia and an uptick in the use of direct action by protesters who feel the time is running out to meet climate targets and protect endangered species.
- Environmentalists and researchers worry the project will endanger marine life through seismic blasting and say studies show it is not necessary to meet the country’s energy needs.

New Caledonia expands strictly protected coverage of its swath of the Pacific
- New Caledonia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific, recently announced that it would highly protect 10% of its economic exclusive zone (EEZ).
- These new highly protected areas will be off-limits to industrial activities such as fishing, drilling and mining.
- A decade ago, New Caledonia designated its entire EEZ as a marine protected area, the Natural Park of the Coral Sea, but industrial activities were permitted across 97.6% of that area at the time.

With record ocean temps, is the Great Barrier Reef facing catastrophe?
- The inaugural international edition of the famed South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival and conference took place from October 15-22, 2023 in Sydney and Mongabay spoke with some of the most interesting presenters there.
- On this edition of the Mongabay Newscast, multiple guests working in coral reef conservation, kelp reforestation and sustainable agriculture detail their projects and challenges they’re tackling.
- Like the catastrophic Great Barrier Reef bleaching event of 2016, if the current conditions line up just right, “we could lose a huge part of the reef by February,” says guest Dean Miller of the Forever Reef Project, which is now racing to add the final coral specimens to its “biobank.”
- Guests also include John “Charlie” Veron from the Forever Reef Project, Mic Black from Rainstick, and Adriana Vergés from the Kelp Forest Alliance.

What does land mean to Australia’s Indigenous groups fighting logging?
- Many Indigenous Gumbaynggirr people in Australia feel an intimate connection to their ancestral lands, which holds the trees, animals, ancestral spirits and creation stories that form a core part of their identity and sense of belonging.
- This landscape, part of the Newry State Forest in New South Wales, Australia, is facing a logging project by the state-owned Forestry Corporation that threatens the habitat of the vulnerable koala species — also a cultural totem.
- Gumbaynggirr protesters resisting logging plans say they believe every part of the world is in deep relationship with each other, including humans to nature and the land. Their cultural duty to protect totems, they say, pushes them to try to stop extractive industries.
- In this piece, Indigenous Gumbaynggirr protesters explain what land — this piece of the Earth — means to them.

Defending a forest for tree kangaroos and people: Q&A with Fidelis Nick
- The Tenkile Conservation Alliance (TCA) has worked for more than two decades now with communities in the Torricelli Mountains of northwestern Papua New Guinea to benefit the three species of tree kangaroo that reside in the region.
- Several dozen communities signed on to a moratorium on hunting tree kangaroos, and today, species numbers are substantially higher than they were before the TCA’s work began.
- The communities have also benefited from the TCA’s economic development projects, which have included rabbit rearing, rainwater catchment systems, and solar-powered lighting installations.
- The TCA has also been working toward official government recognition of the proposed Torricelli Mountain Range Conservation Area. However, progress toward gazetting the protected area appears to have stalled, and mostly foreign logging companies continue to operate in the area, putting pressure on the forests of the Torricellis.

‘The forest is so much more than money’: Q&A with Fijian carbon project ranger Jerry Lotawa
- Jerry Lotawa grew up in Drawa village in the forested highlands of Fiji’s largest island, and is now putting his ecological knowledge to use as lead ranger for the country’s first verified forest carbon project.
- The Indigenous-led project protects 4,120 hectares (10,181 acres) of rainforest that’s under threat from logging and clearing for agriculture, through a 30-year conservation lease that stretches across land belonging to eight mataqali (clans).
- The project has been selling carbon credits since 2018, with the proceeds distributed to the mataqali according to the amount of land they set aside for conservation, and each clan then choosing whether to share the money equally among its members or to hold it collectively for larger projects such as education and infrastructure.
- According to Lotawa, the project has helped locals to better understand the importance of their forest in maintaining their lives and livelihoods, and to pursue economic activities that don’t negatively impact the ecosystem.

Photos: Fiji’s first Indigenous-owned carbon credit project
- Fiji’s first verified forest carbon credit project is based in the Drawa rainforest on the country’s largest island, and has been earning income for its Indigenous landowners for five years now, in exchange for keeping their forests standing amid pressure from logging companies to fell its ancient trees.
- To make sure the project offers a compelling alternative to quick cash from logging permits, alternative livelihood opportunities are important ways to provide day-to-day income for individuals, alongside the cash from carbon credits that’s disbursed to mataqali (clans) on a quarterly basis and often used for collective projects.
- A number of local young men have been trained as rangers to monitor the protected areas, while other villagers, mostly women, are benefiting from their roles in a growing rainforest honey business — though scaling up the business to a more lucrative level remains a challenge.

Pacific alliance adopts moratorium on deep-sea mining, halting resurgent PNG project
- The Melanesian Spearhead Group put in place a moratorium on deep-sea mining within its member countries’ territorial water in a declaration signed Aug. 24.
- Leaders from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and an alliance of pro-independence political parties known as FLNKS from the French territory of New Caledonia said more research is needed to establish whether mining the seabed below 200 meters (660 feet) is possible without damaging ecosystems and fisheries.
- The moratorium ostensibly thwarts the return of Nautilus Minerals, a Canadian company, to Papua New Guinea and its Solwara 1 project in the Bismarck Sea, where it had hoped to mine gold and copper from sulfide deposits on the seafloor.
- Proponents of deep-sea mining say that minerals found deep beneath the ocean are necessary for the production of batteries used in electric vehicles and thus are critical in the global transition away from fossil fuels.

Macron touts forest conservation while promoting gas project on PNG visit
- During a recent visit to Papua New Guinea, French President Emmanuel Macron spent time with both fossil fuel executives and conservationists.
- Macron attended a presentation on the Managalas Conservation Area, which is supported by France as well as other European countries, and praised Indigenous peoples’ protection of the forest.
- During Macron’s visit, French firm TotalEnergies voted to undertake construction of a $10 billion liquefied natural gas project that will release an estimated 220 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Study finds locally managed marine areas in Fiji yield mixed results
- A study found that Fijian communities engaged in the country’s locally managed marine areas network, known as FLMMA, exhibited strengths in the mechanisms believed to advance conservation efforts, such as community participation in decision-making and financial support.
- However, it also found that FLMMA villages didn’t necessarily experience improved economic well-being, wealth, food security or even better ecological outcomes for marine resources.
- The authors say they hope the results will encourage practitioners to reassess community-based marine management projects to understand how they can be modified for success.
- Fiji has one of the most extensive LMMA networks in the world, collectively covering more than 10,000 square kilometers across the country’s territory.

Climate change is no joke for Australians, says award-winning comedian Dan Ilic
- Despite citizens voting out the Scott Morrison-led government of Australia in 2022, Dan Ilic says there’s still a lot of talk around climate change policy with not enough action to meet national climate targets.
- Known widely for his epic billboards appearing in New York’s Times Square during the COP26 climate summit satirizing Australia’s lack of seriousness at the conference, Ilic is host of the award-winning Australian comedy/climate-focused podcast “A Rational Fear” and spoke with the Mongabay Newscast in Sydney about the landscape surrounding climate policy in the country today.
- He also shares his thoughts on victories for Indigenous communities in the Tiwi Islands and the Galilee Basin, both in Australia, where massive fossil fuel proposals were recently blocked.

It’s time to embrace community-led conservation vs. the colonial kind (commentary)
- Conservation NGOs often enter countries like Fiji and advise local and Indigenous communities on how to protect their land and sea territories, or worse, acquire land and preclude the traditional residents from it.
- More NGOs are embracing community-led conservation, though, and we must embrace this, a new op-ed by a former Peace Corps volunteer in Fiji argues.
- “Fiji does not need new ideas on how to protect their ‘iqoliqoli’ (marine areas). Instead, Fiji has a lot to teach the rest of the world,” the author writes.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

After historic storm in New Zealand, Māori leaders call for disaster relief and rights
- After Cyclone Gabrielle hit New Zealand and mostly impacted Indigenous Māori homes, Māori delegates attending the United Nation’s conference on Indigenous peoples say the government has left them out of recovery services and funding.
- The delegates hope their presence at the United Nations forum will increase pressure on the New Zealand government to include Māori people in disaster recovery plans, provide more support for Indigenous-led climate initiatives, and fully implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
- Māori knowledge, known as Mātauranga Māori, has been increasingly included in climate and conservation projects across the country as part of the ‘Vision Mātauranga’ framework, but it has also attracted fierce debate on its status within the scientific community.

Power of traditional beliefs lies at the heart of an anti-mine campaign in PNG
- A newly published study published explores the important role that traditional Papua New Guinean beliefs play in an ongoing campaign against a copper and gold mine on a tributary of the Sepik River.
- Critics say the controversial mine project could potentially pollute one of the most biologically and culturally diverse places on Earth, while supporters point to potential development benefits.
- The Save the Sepik campaign against the mine harnesses traditional governance structures and beliefs, acknowledging the spirits of ancestors, the land and river, in a declaration that has become a rallying cry for the campaign.
- The campaign’s success so far — licenses haven’t been awarded for the mine project — is part of a growing global movement that acknowledges the close relationship some communities have with a sentient environment.

PNG youths’ loss of tradition is bad news for hunting — but also for conservation
- For millennia, hunting has been a prestigious and traditional activity in many Papua New Guinean cultures.
- With an increase in Western education and economic opportunities, there’s been a decline in young Papua New Guineans’ skills in hunting and traditional ecological knowledge, a recent study suggests.
- This decline in hunting skills and loss of generational ecological knowledge may impact conservation efforts in the country, with researchers highlighting the need to maintain this knowledge.

Logging threats loom over tree kangaroo refuge in Papua New Guinea
- Logging is threatening the Torricelli Mountains, a biodiversity-rich forested range in Papua New Guinea known for its tree kangaroos and other threatened species of birds and mammals.
- Community conservation efforts have helped to increase the numbers of tree kangaroos, once nearly pushed to extinction by hunting and logging, in conjunction with development projects for the people of the Torricellis.
- The Tenkile Conservation Alliance, a Papua New Guinean NGO, has led an effort to protect the area, but the government has yet to officially designate what would be the Torricelli Mountain Range Conservation Area.
- Satellite imagery shows the loss of forest and an increase in roadbuilding over the past two years. And residents of the Torricellis say that representatives of logging companies have been trying to secure permission to log the region’s forests.

Rat killers in paradise: An eradication program remakes a tropical atoll
- Like many islands around the world, Tetiaroa Atoll in French Polynesia has been overrun by rats and other invasive species that profoundly affect its terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
- In July, the paradisiacal 12-island atoll was declared rat-free after years of concerted efforts to wipe out the predators.
- Scientists have been studying the atoll’s plants, seabirds, insects, lizards, crabs, coral and algae, establishing a uniquely comprehensive ecological baseline to better understand how the rat eradication will affect the atoll — and others like it.

Small island, big ocean: Niue makes its entire EEZ a marine park
- In April, Niue, a small island nation in the South Pacific Ocean, designated its entire exclusive economic zone — an area about the size of Vietnam — as a multiple-use marine park called Niue Nukutuluea.
- Forty percent of the park is a no-take marine protected area; a smaller slice is managed by local villages. And about 56% of the park is a general-use zone where commercial fishing and other activities, including possibly deep-sea mining, could take place.
- The country has developed an unusual mechanism to fund the park, and is gathering support to confront the perennial challenge of monitoring and compliance in technologically advanced ways.

New Zealand convicts company of illegal trawling in high seas restricted area
- In late August, a court in Aotearoa New Zealand convicted a subsidiary of one of the country’s major seafood companies of illegal trawling in a closed area in the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia.
- The judge fined the company NZ$59,000 (about $33,000) and the skipper NZ$12,000 (about $7,000), and seized the vessel.
- It’s the fourth case in the past five years where courts convicted New Zealand-flagged vessels of illegal trawling.
- The recent conviction comes amid an ongoing debate about trawling in New Zealand, with campaigners calling for a ban on bottom trawling on submarine mountains, and the industry disputing their arguments and resisting aspects of the proposed change.

Giant kangaroo fossil points to previously unknown species in New Guinea
- Paleontologists have described a new genus of giant fossil kangaroo, named Nombe after the Nombe Rockshelter archaeological site where the fossil was originally found in Papua New Guinea.
- The finding was a chance discovery as Ph.D. candidate Isaac Kerr was reexamining a jawbone bone found in the 1970s and originally believed to belong to the extinct genus Protemnodon, the cousin of the modern day eastern gray and red kangaroos that are found in Australia.
- There has only been limited archaeological research on the island of New Guinea to date, and the fossil record is patchy.
- The team say they hope further research will offer insights into how the island’s extraordinary modern-day biodiversity, much of which is endemic, evolved.

‘The sea means everything’: Q&A with deep-sea mining opponent Debbie Ngarewa-Packer
- New Zealand parliamentarian and Māori activist Debbie Ngarewa-Packer has spent more than two decades serving in leadership roles, using her positions to advance social justice issues and to campaign for the protection of the marine environment.
- A key issue that Ngarewa-Packer is currently working on is a push to ban deep-sea mining in the global ocean, a proposed activity that would extract large amounts of minerals from the seabed.
- Ngarewa-Packer previously worked with other Māori activists, NGOs and community members to block consent for a deep-sea mining operation in her home district of South Taranaki on New Zealand’s North Island.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Ngarewa-Packer talks about why it’s critical to protect the deep sea from mining, what ancestral teachings say about protecting the ocean, and why she feels hopeful about the future.

Young Māori divers hunt invasive crown-of-thorns starfish to save coral reefs
- The island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands is experiencing an outbreak of crown-of-thorns-starfish (taramea, Acanthaster planci), which could jeopardize the survival of its surrounding coral reef.
- Local environmental organization Kōrero O Te `Ōrau has been tackling the outbreak since 2020 by training young Māori people in scuba diving and running regular expeditions to remove taramea from the reef and bury them inland.
- The work has contained the outbreak on two sides of the island by collecting over 3,700 crown-of-thorns starfish, ultimately mitigating its impact on reef health. However, ongoing efforts are required.
- The project is also upskilling young Cook Islanders in marine management theory and practice.

Nickel, Tesla and two decades of environmental activism: Q&A with leader Raphaël Mapou
- Nickel mining in New Caledonia, a French overseas territory in the south Pacific, is receiving international attention after the electrical vehicle giant Tesla recently invested in its largest mine, Goro.
- The mine has been plagued by environmental and social issues for the last decade. It is related to five chemical spills and Indigenous Kanak struggles for sovereignty over its resources.
- Raphaël Mapou is a Kanak leader who established the environmental organization Rhéébù Nùù in 2002 as a means to address concerns about the effects of mining at Goro.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Mapou talks about the legacy of Rhéébù Nùù and if a change of ownership at Goro, combined with Tesla’s investment, can deliver positive outcomes for surrounding communities.

All eyes on Tesla as it invests in a troubled nickel mine
- American manufacturing giant Tesla invested in New Caledonia’s Goro mine in 2021, raising local expectations that international scrutiny and the mine’s new owners could help the plant overcome past environmental mismanagement issues and social woes.
- Since 2010, there have been five recorded acid leaks at the Goro mine into nearby bays and reefs. The mine is also related to Indigenous Kanak struggles for sovereignty over its resources and violent protests in 2020.
- The mine was bought by Prony Resources, whose shares are largely owned by New Caledonian stakeholders, including local communities. Kanaks now see themselves as stakeholders and watchdogs in the mine’s production.
- Local organizations and researchers plan to keep a close eye on the environmental impacts of mining in New Caledonia, especially as Prony Resources proposes a new waste management process and China lays out its interests in the region.

Proposed copper and gold mine threatens the world’s ‘second Amazon’ in PNG
- A proposed copper and gold mine threatens the biologically and culturally diverse Sepik River Basin in western Papua New Guinea, according to community leaders and conservationists.
- They’ve raised concerns about the impact that potentially toxic waste from the mine would have on the region’s forests and waterways, which are critical to sustaining human, animal and plant life in this region.
- Proponents of the mine say it would bring jobs, infrastructure and development to the region’s communities.
- Today, a renewed campaign to list the Sepik River Basin as a UNESCO World Heritage Site is gaining momentum and would permanently keep projects like the mine at bay, say organizers of the movement.

Scaling Palauan tradition to regional fisheries: Q&A with Noah Idechong
- After training as a traditional hunter and fisherman in his village in Palau as a boy, Noah Idechong has since become a “bit of a legend” in Pacific marine conservation.
- He has been a government official, an activist, a politician, a legislator, and the founder of a domestic conservation NGO. Currently, he’s the executive director for Micronesia and Polynesia at the international conservation NGO The Nature Conservancy.
- In all of these roles, Idechong has focused on one main thing: championing the traditional systems the communities of Palau employ to protect and conserve the archipelago’s rich marine biodiversity and domestic fisheries.
- Today, he’s applying that ethos at a regional scale as he helps build more sustainable regional tuna fisheries that benefit the Pacific island nations in whose waters the tuna swim, rather than foreign fishing enterprises.

Podcast: Community empowerment and forest conservation grow from the galip nut in Papua New Guinea
- Galip nuts are a well-known, traditional agricultural product in Papua New Guinea (PNG).
- Papua New Guineans are currently reaping the economic and environmental benefits of this nut via agroforestry led by local communities and women entrepreneurs.
- In this episode, we speak with Dorothy Devine Luana, PNG-based owner of DMS Organics, a galip nut grower and processor, and Nora Devoe, research program manager for a project of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), focused on the potential of the galip nut industry to sustainably empower PNG communities.

Podcast: Who owns the companies destroying rainforests in the heart of New Guinea?
- New Guinea, home to the world’s third-largest rainforest, also contains the world’s largest planned oil palm plantation.
- Covering 2,800 square kilometers (1,100 square miles) the Tanah Merah project is nearly the size of the U.S. state of Rhode Island.
- However, the true owners of the seven concessions that make up the project remain hidden through a shroud of corporate secrecy.
- We speak with Philip Jacobson, senior editor at Mongabay, and Bonnie Sumner, investigative reporter at the Aotearoa New Zealand organization Newsroom, to discuss the project from inception to present day, the involvement of a New Zealand businessman, and where the project could go next.

‘A huge mistake’: Concerns rise as deep-sea mining negotiations progress
- The International Seabed Authority (ISA), the U.N.-affiliated organization tasked with managing deep-sea mining activities, recently held a series of meetings to continue negotiating the development of mining regulations.
- Deep-sea mining may start as early as 2023 after Nauru triggered a two-year rule embedded in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea that could essentially allow its sponsored company to start mining with whatever regulations are currently in place.
- Many states are eager to finalize a set of regulations over the next 15 months that would determine how mining can proceed in the deep sea.
- But other states and delegates have noted the lack of scientific knowledge around deep-sea mining, the absence of a financial compensation plan in the event of environmental damage, and ongoing transparency issues in the ISA — and the unlikelihood of finalizing regulatory measures in a short period of time.

PNG suspends new carbon deals, scrambles to write rules for the schemes
- Papua New Guinea’s government is working to create new regulations governing voluntary carbon schemes, which are arrangements negotiated directly between developers and resource owners.
- While the new laws are developed, the country’s environment ministry has imposed a moratorium on new voluntary carbon deals in the country.
- The moratorium, and development of a stronger legal framework, comes after “significant red flags” were raised over a proposed carbon credit deal in the country’s Oro province.

‘We have a full pharmacopoeia of plants’: Q&A with Māori researcher Nicola Macdonald
- Aotearoa New Zealand’s green-lipped mussel industry provides a relatively sustainable source of animal protein, but the plastic ropes used to catch mussel larvae are a source of marine plastic pollution.
- Researchers are using mātauranga (Māori traditional knowledge) and Western science to work out whether natural fiber ropes, made from native species traditionally used by Māori, could provide a suitable and biodegradable alternative.
- Mongabay spoke with Indigenous researcher Nicola Macdonald about the research process, the findings so far, and the team’s hopes for helping create a more sustainable aquaculture industry.

Podcast: Tree kangaroos may be key to New Guinea forest conservation
- New Guinea is home to 12 of 14 species of the elusive, charismatic tree kangaroo.
- Conservationists in Papua New Guinea have been fighting for decades to establish protected areas using these species as a flagship species for these conservation efforts. PNG is now on the cusp of passing legislation aimed at creating a network of them.
- The Torricelli mountain range in northern PNG, home to the critically endangered tenkile tree kangaroo, has been in the crosshairs of a road project threatening to encroach upon the region, but the government is in the process of reviewing a draft proposal to halt the road for now.
- We speak with Jim Thomas of the Tenkile Conservation Alliance and Lisa Dabek and Modi Pontio of the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program for this episode to explore what’s known about these intelligent marsupials, and the successes from nearly two decades working in PNG to conserve both them and the forests they inhabit.

Podcast: The Trans-Papua Highway could lose billions and deforest millions of hectares
- Set to run some 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) and being built over the course of decades, the Trans-Papua Highway cuts across the entire length of Indonesian New Guinea’s two provinces.
- While nearly complete, it has not yet fully interlinked major cities, and has raised concerns among experts that it could open up the world’s third-largest swath of tropical rainforest to further deforestation. Tanah Papua has already lost 750,000 hectares of forest cover (1.85 million acres) over the past 20 years.
- A study published last September warns that if the Trans-Papua Highway spurs a similar spate of development on Papua as the Trans-Kalimantan Highway did on Borneo, the region could lose up to an additional 4.5 million hectares (11.12 million acres) of forest cover by 2036.
- For this episode of the Mongabay Explores podcast, we interview David Gaveau, who founded The TreeMap (a forest loss monitoring platform), and distinguished professor at James Cook University, Bill Laurance to discuss the impacts the Trans-Papua Highway could have for Indonesian New Guinea.

Indigenous knowledge ‘gives us a much richer picture’: Q&A with Māori researcher Ocean Mercier
- The Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, have extensive knowledge about oceans and marine environments, which has not always been valued or recognized.
- In recent decades, Māori researchers and knowledge holders have elevated the position of mātauranga (Māori traditional knowledge) about oceans in academic and community contexts.
- Ocean Mercier is an Indigenous researcher who works at the interface of mātauranga and Western science, on issues such as marine and freshwater conservation and management.
- She recently spoke with Mongabay about the benefits, challenges and “crunchy bits” of working across knowledge systems in this way.

Podcast: Protecting New Guinea’s forests with birds-of-paradise and ecotourism
- The island of New Guinea is home to 44 species of unique birds-of-paradise that are found nowhere else on Earth.
- The EcoNusa Foundation in Indonesia and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have partnered on a campaign called “defending paradise,” using the birds as ambassadors for the island’s biodiversity and communities.
- Home to the third-largest tract of tropical rainforest in the world, of which 80% is still intact, New Guinea is in a unique position to conserve its forest cover as part of an economy that serves its local inhabitants, rather than extracting from and deforesting these communities.
- For this episode of Mongabay Explores, we interview Bustar Maitar, founder and CEO of the EcoNusa Foundation, and Edwin Scholes, head of the Birds-of-Paradise Project at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Podcast: ‘Carbon cowboys’ and illegal logging
- Papua New Guinea has been the world’s largest tropical timber exporter since 2014. More than 70% of the timber produced in the country is considered illegal.
- Despite two government inquiries finding the majority of land leases on which logging occurs to be illegal, these land leases still remain in force today.
- While carbon trading has been touted as a solution, activists, journalists and even a provincial governor have expressed concerns over its economic benefits and the continued loss of customary land rights.
- For this episode of Mongabay Explores we interview Gary Juffa, governor of Oro province in Papua New Guinea, and investigative journalist, Rachel Donald.

Analysts point to logging and mining to explain Solomon Islands unrest
- In November 2021, Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, was wracked by riots that left three people dead and the city’s Chinatown in ashes.
- The unrest was stoked by the prime minister’s decision to end diplomatic ties with Taiwan and instead side with Beijing, stirring up anti-Chinese sentiment, as well as tensions between Guadalcanal province, where the capital is located, and Malaita, the country’s most-populous province but also one of its least-developed.
- However, some analysts say the true causes of discontent lie in the cozy relationships between officials and the foreign logging and mining firms that are ravaging the country.

Podcast: Exploring New Guinea’s extraordinary natural and cultural richness
- New Guinea is one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. Making up less than 0.5% of the world’s landmass, it is estimated to contain as much as 10% of global biodiversity.
- The dense mountainous region creates barriers to development and conservation alike, but has contributed to preserving 80% of the island’s forest cover which still remains intact.
- However, experts are worried that extractive industries threaten not just its vast biodiversity but the human knowledge, culture, and livelihood of its original inhabitants, which represent more than 1,000 different languages across the island.
- Mongabay Explores is an episodic podcast series exploring unique people, places, and stories from around the globe in-depth. You may be familiar with our previous seasons on “The Great Salamander Pandemic,” and “Sumatra.”

Australia’s rainforest species gain ground through landscape linkages
- Corridors of planted rainforest trees — landscape linkages — are a straightforward, but costly, on-ground action that can repair past damage and bolster ecosystem resilience in Australia’s Wet Tropics region.
- In the Atherton Tablelands wildlife corridors, now in their third decade, the diversity of naturally regenerating plant species has increased, with trees, vines, rattans, shrubs, palms, ferns and orchids colonizing the planted sites.
- The corridors are providing connectivity and additional habitat for a range of rainforest wildlife, including some threatened by climate change.
- To thoroughly measure the biodiversity outcomes of the linkages, monitoring would need to be more regular, and target a broader range of taxa.

First Nations unite to fight industrial exploitation of Australia’s Martuwarra
- The Fitzroy River in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, one of the country’s most ecologically and culturally significant waterways, is facing proposals of further agriculture and mining development, including irrigation and fracking.
- In response, First Nations communities in the region have developed different methods to promote the conservation of the river, including curating cultural festivals, funding awareness campaigns, and working with digital technologies.
- First Nations land rights are held along the length of the Fitzroy River, the first time this has occurred across an entire catchment area in Australia.
- The catchment is the last stronghold of the world’s most “evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered” species, the freshwater sawfish (Pristis pristis) and is home to the threatened northern river shark (Glyphis garricki).

Governor rails against ‘bioterrorists,’ ‘carbon cowboys’ destroying PNG’s forests
- Gary Juffa, governor of Papua New Guinea’s Oro province, is one of the country’s most outspoken critics of the logging industry.
- Juffa said he’s had to resort to the courts to force out three logging firms operating in his province, and called on the international community to fight illegal loggers in PNG.
- While critical about the slow pace of global deforestation agreements, Juffa said he’s optimistic about the possibilities of carbon finance for his country; other PNG activists are more skeptical.

Deforestation notches up along logging roads on PNG’s New Britain Island
- Recent satellite data has shown a marked increase in the loss of tree cover in Papua New Guinea’s East New Britain province.
- Many of the alerts were near new or existing logging roads, indicating that the forest loss may be due to timber harvesting.
- Oil palm production is also growing, altering the face of a province that had more than 98% of its primary forest remaining less than a decade ago.
- The surge in land use changes has affected not only the environment in East New Britain, but also the lives of the members of the communities who depend on it.

Deforestation threatens tree kangaroo habitat in Papua New Guinea
- A proposed conservation area in northwestern Papua New Guinea has experienced a substantial surge in deforestation-related alerts, according to satellite data from the University of Maryland.
- The still-unofficial Torricelli Mountain Range Conservation Area is home to critically endangered tree kangaroo species, along with a host of other biodiversity.
- In May 2021, communities voiced concern about road construction that was approaching the boundaries of the proposed conservation area and that the intended target may have been high-value timber species found within the region’s forests.
- Investment in local communities and the protection of the forests that these communities provide have led to an apparent rise in tree kangaroo populations, but logging and other potentially destructive land uses such as conversion to large-scale agriculture remain threats in the Torricellis and throughout Papua New Guinea.

What’s fair in conservation to locals? Just ask, study says
- In many protected areas, the distribution of funds for conservation seldom considers the Indigenous population’s views on how the money should be spent.
- In Fiji, the Indigenous iTaukei people co-manage Vatu-i-Ra Conservation Park, a marine protected area, under traditional rules and values.
- Researchers did a study at Vatu-i-Ra where they asked the local population what they see as the fairest way to distribute conservation funds.
- They discovered to their surprise that the iTaukei felt the fairest means of fund distribution was according to who has customary rights, and not equal benefits or the opportunity-cost approach, as is typically practiced in Western conservation.

The most widespread pig species on Earth: wild boar | Candid Animal Cam
- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.

For sea snakes, underwater sex is a washout more often than not
- A sea snake’s senses of sight and smell are greatly diminished underwater, and the added challenge of trying to stay buoyant makes underwater mating no easy feat.
- A new study has identified several distinct features unique to adult male turtelheaded sea snakes thought to help improve their chances of coupling with a female underwater, most notably a high concentration of touch receptors in key spots along the body.
- A previous study found 20 of 31 male turtleheaded snakes lost contact with the female during courtship, often then attempting to mate with nearby objects such as a diver’s fin or sea cucumber.

Road construction imperils tree kangaroo recovery in PNG
- The Torricelli Mountains of northwestern Papua New Guinea are home to a wide variety of wildlife, including three species of tree kangaroos.
- Recently, construction of a road that could potentially be used by loggers has pushed closer to the border of a proposed conservation area that, if gazetted, would be the country’s second-largest.
- The Tenkile Conservation Alliance, a Papua New Guinean NGO, has worked with communities for around two decades in the Torricellis with the goal of improving the lives of humans and wildlife living in the mountains.
- Now, the group’s leaders fear that the road could jeopardize a tenuous recovery by several of the area’s threatened tree kangaroo species.

Nauru’s intention to mine the seabed prompts alarm among conservationists
- Nauru has notified the International Seabed Authority (ISA) that its sponsored entity, Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. (NORI), plans to commence deep-sea mining in two years’ time, triggering a two-year rule embedded in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
- The ISA has yet to generate a mining code that would set out rules and regulations for deep-sea mining activities.
- Experts are concerned that the ISA will prematurely approve Nauru’s application and that deep-sea mining will commence before we fully understand the damage it could cause to biodiversity and ecosystems.

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