Eco-Tourism in the Rain Forests of Crater Mountain, Papua New Guinea

by Research and Conservation Foundation of PNG

Partners:

Research and Conservation Foundation of PNG (RCF) Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)

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.

Successes and Challenges

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