| Sports |
A wealth of
biodiversity
By LLOYD JONES, Papua New
Guinea Correspondent
BENSBACH, Papua New
Guinea, Oct 3 AAP - In the dark of night, men with knives and
torches stalk through the reeds to jump and stab wild deer and
wallabies in Papua New Guinea's southern wetlands.
These bushmeat hunters are from villages on the Bensbach River
which snakes its way through vast wetlands, savannahs and
monsoon forests that spread across the border into Indonesian
Papua.
This is the TransFly region, a 10 million hectare zone
straddling the mighty Fly River and stretching south to the
coast only kilometres from Australian islands in the Torres
Strait.
The pristine wildlife habitats here are hardly known to the
outside world but could one day draw thousands of tourists and
match the great protected areas of Australia's Kakadu or
Africa's Okavango.
Millions of birds frequent the wetlands, including pelicans,
ibis, egrets, herons, geese, ducks and waders which fly from
Australia each year to spend the southern winter in these rich
feeding grounds.
They share this vast lowland region of big skies and long views
with farmers, fishermen and hunters.
Within large sections of this sparsely-peopled domain, villagers
have taken on the role of wildlife managers backed by the
conservation organisation WWF.
Renowned American scientist Jared Diamond has just launched
710,000 hectares of new Wildlife Management Areas in the
TransFly to add to the existing Tonda area.
At Wando village on the Bensbach, the University of California
professor from Los Angeles is adorned with a cassowary-feather
head dress then plants a commemorative coconut palm the
villagers name Diamond.
He tells hundreds of tribes people that their wildlife
protection role is crucial for millions of migrant birds from
Australia, Asia and Europe.
The conservation biologist, geographer and ornithologist says
Australia has to wake up to the importance of the region to
millions of overwintering Australian bird migrants.
He urges Australia to spend tens of millions of dollars to help
conserve wildlife habitats in the TransFly and fund migration
studies using transmitters attached to birds.
Diamond, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Guns, Germs and
Steel, says Australian conservationists are developing
commendable programs to protect waterbird habitats in Australia.
"But there is no way Australian birds will be safe unless they
are also protected here in Papua New Guinea because they spend
nearly half of their time here.
TransFly landowners have taken on the task of conserving
wildlife habitats while maintaining sustainable farming, fishing
and hunting.
At Wando, in front of a house walled and roofed with paperbark,
wildlife management committee member Siwai Nema says his people
want more tourism.
"We want to see a lot of people come to see the place and the
wildlife but we want to do it in a sustainable way and not
disturb the area."
Nema says he hopes the PNG government or WWF can help his people
set up small tourism, fishing or bushmeat businesses.
When rainfall is good, introduced Rusa deer thrive in the
TransFly and are hunted by the locals and targeted by Indonesian
poachers.
Nema says sometimes his people and the poachers clash and the
intruders' boats and motorcycles are seized.
We are fearing that the two governments might come to a clash if
our sides fight on these things."
Nema wants the government to ensure more regular patrols of the
border to stop incursions.
In the TransFly with Diamond is expert bird guide David Bishop
who has made about 20 trips to the region and compiled bird
reports for WWF.
He's noticed a huge increase in the number of deer on the PNG
side but says it's unclear what impact they'll have on the
wetlands.
It's also unclear whether they seek refuge in PNG from intense
hunting in Indonesia where deer, wallaby and cassowary numbers
have plunged, Bishop says.
On the PNG side the impact of people is minimal and bird
populations appear very healthy.
Bishop cites the large numbers of Brolgas and other migrant
waterbirds and the healthy populations of sea eagles and
Great-Billed Herons.
"Obviously there's plenty of fish and there's no pollution."
The TransFly supports up to 99 per cent of the world population
of Australian Pratincoles, Bishop says.
Australia is putting up big money to survey its wetlands in
October 2008 but isn't including southern New Guinea, he says.
"It means they're going to lose a very key part of the equation.
"It would give them a solid baseline for understanding the
distribution of wetland birds."
Australian migrant birds in the TransFly also include
kingfishers, dollarbirds, bee-eaters and swallows.
The region has its own unique species in the Spangled Kookaburra
and Fly River Grassbird along with the Bronze Quoll, a marsupial
cat recently found to be the same species as quolls in
south-western Australia.
Goannas sun themselves on the banks of the Bensbach while
cuscus, bandicoots, flying possums and bush rats roam the
woodlands at night and crocodiles patrol the waterways.
WWF sees great potential in ecotourism to provide income for
landowners and incentives for them to preserve habitats.
Paul Chatterton, WWF's conservation director in PNG, says it's
hoped the Wildlife Management Areas will be extended and form
part of a two million hectare cross-border conservation area
with the Wasur National Park in Indonesian Papua.
"It creates an enormous cross-border zone with huge tourism
potential and it could be a source of cooperation between the
two countries."
WWF wants other organisations to help establish "what will be
one of the world's great protection areas in line with Kakadu
and the Serengeti", Chatterton says.
WWF officers have been in the TransFly for ten years helping
communities protect wildlife habitats and tackle such issues as
weed invasion, poaching, fires and wild dogs.
They encourage villagers to change slash and burn gardening
habits and hunting practices to preserve forest habitats and
wildlife.
Local wildlife committees have imposed limits on deer kills
because the new method of stalking with knives and torches can
kill 10 or more deer a night, threatening the ongoing supply of
bushmeat.
WWF TransFly project manager Enoch Ontiri, from Kenya, says
cassowary numbers have dropped dramatically in recent years
because of hunting, egg collecting and Christianity.
The bird has been a revered totem in some communities, which set
aside sacred cassowary areas where hunting, gardening or
collecting firewood was banned, he says.
The spread of Christianity led to a breakdown of the sacred
areas, which were cassowary havens, Ontiri says.
The answer is for landowners to declare protected areas for
conservation reasons so numbers will increase, he says.
WWF believes the future of TransFly wildlife depends on the
success of the tribespeople in managing their wildlife habitats.
Diamond says many conservation efforts around the world are
focused on saving the "last scraps of large, wrecked
ecosystems".
"In New Guinea, we're not saving the last scraps, we're saving
the large intact ecosystems. That's something that makes me
relatively hopeful."
But the TransFly faces environmental threats from logging of the
monsoon forests, the spread of rice growing into the grasslands
and invading species of fish and weeds.
WWF conservationists working with the people of the marshes have
planted the seeds of a vast cross-border conservation area
protected from destructive development and supporting thriving
wildlife populations drawing thousands of tourists a year.
Matching the growth of those seeds to fruition will be a coconut
palm called Diamond planted in the big sky country.
AAP
 
|
