Biodiversity Conservation Network
15. Ecotourism in the Rain Forests of Crater Mountain
Location: Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area, Papua New Guinea Partners: Research and Conservation Foundation of PNG (RCF)
Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)BCN Funding: $498,107 Partner Contribution: $76,950 Grant Period: August 1, 1995 - July 31, 1998
What's at Stake?
The Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area (WMA) covers 2600 square kilometers, an area about the size of Rhode Island. Spanning three provinces which range from the Eastern Highlands at the peak, Simbu province in the mid-elevation region and Gulf province in the lowlands, it contains a full range of biodiversity, much of which is unique to Papua New Guinea (PNG). Primary forest blankets the lower elevations, while alpine scrub and grasslands occur higher up. The area is home to 220 bird species of which 49 are endemic and 84 mammal species, of which 15 are endemic. Although the WMA currently has a low population density, a number of threats are looming in the near future including industrial logging, mining and oil drilling.
To counter these threats, the project team is establishing locally-owned and operated research and ecotourism enterprises in the WMA. These enterprises provide lodging and guide services for visiting scientists, as well as for domestic and international visitors. The team is working with landowners to develop a land-use management plan which provides for biodiversity conservation and enterprise sustainability. We hope to demonstrate to government officials and other land-owners in PNG, that community managed lands can generate profits in a sustainable fashion.
1997 Update
In the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area (WMA), project staff continue to provide technical assistance and training to three communities as they develop a suite of eco-enterprises.
Over the last year, increasing numbers of scientists and eco-tourists have visited a wider range of WMA facilities. Research activity, originally concentrated at the Wara Sera Research Station near Haia, has now expanded to a variety of studies in many parts of the WMA. This is due to both word of mouth marketing of WMA facilities by satisfied scientists and improved WMA services and infrastructure including accommodation, availability of trained village assistants, standardized pay rates, and the presence of support services, such as computer and communication facilities. The research includes both biologists and anthropologists who are generating baseline surveys and providing a greater understanding of human use of the natural resources.
Likewise, eco-tourists are now visiting all communities in the WMA. In each, there is a guest facility made of simple bush materials and a package of day and overnight guided tours operated by community members from which visitors can choose. National tour operators want to link a visit to the Crater Mountain area as a rustic adventure add-on to their existing soft tourism operations in the Highlands region of PNG.
There are now four handicraft stores in the WMA, one in each community. The businesses are run by a local committee with proceeds going to over 100 artisans in each village. They also fill out mail order sales and send community representatives and handicrafts out to sell at national handicraft shows.
To assess change over time, ten economic indicators are being monitored by the project and community representatives. They include sales and profits of all businesses, customer satisfaction, community spending and local capacity of individuals participating in each village enterprise. All businesses have received a variety of training from project staff and have realized increased profits over the last year while spending in all communities has risen. To assess the hypothesized linkage between eco-enterprise success and conservation of biodiversity, project staff and community representatives monitor seven natural resource indicators including changes in sensitive biological indicator species and in natural resource use. While economic indicators are rising, preliminary results do not indicate a proportional change in the biological or natural resource use indicators. While it may be that biological indicators may take much longer to show response to any changes in management practices, lack of change in resource use may suggest that the realization by WMA communities of the linkage of their natural resources to the continued success of the eco-enterprises is still in a very early stage of development.
We feel now that many more years of stewarded discussion and concrete examples of resource value, in addition to visitor feedback, will be necessary to illustrate to the communities the linkage of the unique nature and value of their natural resources to the present success of their eco-enterprise activities.
Success Stories
As a result of the expanse of the area and the relative newness of the establishment of functioning Wildlife Management Areas in PNG, some national, and most provincial and district government departments are not familiar with, and are even suspicious of, the collective actions of communities and NGOs to implement conservation and eco-enterprise development initiatives in remote regions.
Under the national legislation, land-owning clans in the WMA are to identify clan representatives to form Management Committees who will create natural resource law (within the parameters of the national law) and act in an official capacity to enforce them. Yet over the last three years, despite the Crater Mountain landowner management group's conscientious effort to draft and enforce natural resource laws within the boundaries of the WMA, they have received limited assistance from government departments when prosecution of violations is requested.
To try to improve matters, in May 1997, the project staff and landowner committee representatives from four WMA communities staged the first provincial briefing for public officials from Eastern Highlands and Simbu provinces. This included presentations to government departments by national project staff and landowner Management Committee representatives about the eco-enterprises, management institutions, natural resource laws and enforcement procedures operating in the WMA.
Officials from both provinces were impressed that local communities from 21 different clans and two language groups, with limited formal education in the remote regions of their provinces, could generate and manage income from enterprises based on conservation instead of the customary large-scale resource extraction model of development. Many said they did not know that national NGOs in PNG had the capacity to provide such a level of services or to conduct the sophisticated analysis of the process through the interdisciplinary monitoring activities being utilized in the Crater project.
Given their success, Crater Mountain landowners gained confidence to talk directly with national and provincial authorities about the resolutions from the Crater Mountain Annual WMA Meeting later in August 1997. Committees reviewed and ratified their natural resource laws and sent copies to the Department of Environment and Conservation for gazettal. They also attached letters which expressed their concerns about some government departments involved in granting of logging and mining permits in parts of the WMA without assuring full participation of the WMA management structure in the process.
We hope that the success of the briefings will serve to foster greater support and collaboration from the district and provincial level government of PNG in the protection of the Crater Mountain WMA in the months ahead. That support will be critical as communities work to strengthen and maintain their natural resource laws to withstand the pressures of large mining and logging operations now on the WMA borders. Our experience illustrates that, despite our busy and demanding schedules, it is truly essential to keep all stakeholders informed and involved in the conservation process to increase the chances for success.
Challenges
Significant threats loom on the boundaries of the WMA. In the lowlands, over the south border, large-scale logging activities in a national Forest Management Area are testing the management capacity of clan communities inside the WMA. Is there enough financial income, value and satisfaction derived from the existing eco-enterprises and conservation procedures now operating in the WMA, to prevent community factions from abandoning enterprises with conservation linkages for non-sustainable short-term profits?
Likewise on the northern boundary of the WMA, industrial and government requests to explore for gold and copper deposits have divided clans of the same language group. Those within the WMA have cautiously examined the options, requesting more information and guidance from NGOs on how proposed activities will effect their current eco-enterprise and conservation activities.
Related clans outside of the WMA boundaries, within the same mineral exploration area, have applied intense pressure on their neighbors to submit to the requests for further exploration and possible exploitation of mineral deposits. At times over the last year, the tense negotiations between clans have led to tribal fights. Clans downstream from the exploration area in the WMA are also worried about their water quality if clans upstream elect for possibilities of mineral extraction.
Can the young Management Committees within the WMA maintain consensus on such volatile environmental issues? Representatives from all 21 clans have agreed that no such large-scale exploitation of natural resources in the WMA will be permitted. Yet, the pressure on individuals and selected clans to pull out of the WMA consortium is intense. Will the national, provincial and district level government support or disarm the fledgling conservation initiatives in the WMA? Based on the successful briefings from May, we are hopeful that they will lend support to the tremendous first steps that landowners have achieved in one of the first operational Wildlife Management Areas in the country. Yet, are they sufficiently convinced of the economic and environmental value of the WMA's biodiversity to the region to objectively review the other development options which may be presented?
Throughout the WMA, landowners with an average education level of grade one and still largely engaged in a subsistence lifestyle, struggle to collect and digest information about everything from natural resource law, economic options and probabilities of businesses that they are only beginning to understand, and the unknown and little understand social impacts of the development options being presented to them. Project staff, in turn, are challenged to collect and deliver the needed information for decision-making to the communities in a clear and uncomplicated format while still addressing the complexities of the options and their implications. We come back to the need for strong partnerships from collaborative communities, NGOs and government departments to work with the Crater Mountain WMA, in what may be it's biggest challenge yet.
Authors:
Arlyne Johnson is employed by the Wildlife Conservation Society and serves as a technical adviser to the Crater Mountain Integrated Conservation and Development Project in PNG.
John Ericho is the national Project Manager and has worked in the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area with the Research and Conservation Foundation since 1994.
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