The Hewa of Papua New Guinea pursue conservation-based development by maintaining traditional biodiverse mosaics on their lands.
William Thomas

The Laigaip River in Hewa territory is the main eastern tributary of the Strickland River, PNG. Photo: William Thomas
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Why does cultural diversity go hand in hand with biodiversity? What’s the secret? Do Indigenous societies hold some special knowledge that we in the developed world have lost, or have we misinterpreted the relationship between humanity and biodiversity? More importantly, can this knowledge be instrumental in conserving our planet’s most biologically diverse lands?
The Hewa are remote even by PNG’s standards.
I have spent the last thirty years trying to understand the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and biodiversity. My teachers on this journey have been the Hewa people living at the headwaters of the Strickland River in Papua New Guinea (PNG). These limestone peaks contain the largest intact forest ecosystem in the Pacific. With no roads and little infrastructure, the Hewa are remote even by PNG’s standards. This is one of the least explored regions on earth, with biodiversity that rivals that of the Amazon. From 2008 to 2009, an international team of biologists conducted a rapid assessment of the region and identified fifty species new to science.

A map of PNG showing Hewa territory. Photo: GNU Free Documentation License/Wikimedia Commons
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To provide for their subsistence, the Hewa clear the forest to create gardens. When I began my research, the mainstream thinking was that human activity of any kind is antithetical to conservation. People and parks did not mix. Land rights in PNG, however, are sacrosanct. The Hewa were going to continue living on their lands — and, if this area was to be conserved, I had to convince conservation’s gatekeepers that people and biodiversity could coexist.

A Hewa man with a traditional nose piercing. Photo: William Thomas
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As a graduate student, I was introduced to the Hewa by Lyle Steadman — the first anthropologist to work with them. Lyle accompanied me on my first visit, introducing me to the people he had worked with during his groundbreaking fieldwork. The most important person Lyle introduced me to was Tama. On Lyle’s first visit in 1966, Tama was a boy. His father had befriended Lyle, so Tama recognized Lyle and adopted me. He was the perfect mentor for me — a master naturalist, who understood these forests. More importantly, Tama was a leader with a dream that he hoped would give his children a place in modern PNG.

William Thomas landing in Hewa territory in 2007. Photo: Porgera Joint Venture
At first, I had no idea about Tama’s dream. I was still having difficulty with the language, let alone with digesting what was going on around me. Every day, I tested his patience with questions about what bird could be found where, or what tree attracted which pollinators or seed dispersers. After each session, I would go for a hike, doing my best to explore my surroundings. One day I came upon Tama as he cut trees on an “airstrip” that he hoped would lure outsiders and create a future for his children.
I was flabbergasted. Anyone who has seen a mature rainforest can imagine the backbreaking work involved in cutting hundreds of these trees with an axe. I was sympathetic to Tama’s desire for a better life but didn’t subscribe to his “build it and they will come” philosophy. I also knew that a global carbon market was on the horizon — a means of monetizing those lands without cutting the forests or compromising Tama’s land rights. What we needed was a way of communicating the depth of traditional knowledge to conservationists. Then we needed to rally the community around the prospect of a conservation-based development future. Together, we hatched a plan to create a conservation area with the help of a famous conservationist and, paradoxically, a gold mine.
The Hewa’s creative disturbance of the landscape produces a biodiverse mosaic.
Bruce Beehler is a naturalist renowned for his work on the island of New Guinea. At the time, he was working with Conservation International and the Porgera Joint Venture gold mine to develop a conservation area in the Kaijende Highlands near the mine. Bruce understood the global significance of Tama’s homeland. We had both participated in a conference where I had presented my findings on the relationship between Hewa gardening and biodiversity: when the forest is cleared to create gardens, that intervention tends to generate landscapes with greater diversity than an unaltered landscape. Since I was providing solid evidence of the creative impact of habitat disturbance on biodiversity, Bruce thought that we could work together and introduced me to his sponsors at Porgera. As the mine affects both Kaijende and the Hewa territory, Porgera was willing to sponsor the conservation areas.
The Hewa’s creative disturbance of the landscape produces a biodiverse mosaic whose conservation became a priority for PNG. At the same time, though, Hewa gardening creates patches that are less diverse than the surrounding forest. Each of the patches presents a succession regime that does not attract the birds this forest depends on for regeneration. According to the Hewa, removal of the primary forest will eliminate up to 56 of the 177 species of birds found there; shortening the fallow period to less than twenty years removes another 42 species. In plain language, more intensive gardening will drive away the cassowaries, doves, hornbills, parrots, and lorikeets — the iconic birds that build New Guinea’s forests.

A male Wilson’s bird of paradise (Diphyllodes respublica), one of the 177 species of birds found in PNG. Photo: Tim Lahman
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We had our way forward, and birds were the key. The main difficulty in working with people who speak a unique language is obviously communication with outsiders. Conservationists had already agreed that the Hewa territory was an important piece of PNG’s conservation plans. Hewa traditional knowledge of birds bridged the language gap and convinced the conservationists of the Hewa’s reliability as partners in conservation. The next step was to build community support by creating a program that would help maintain the culture that produced this environmental knowledge base and bring benefits to the community.
The Hewa now see a conservation area as an opportunity to develop an economic base that will improve their lives without sacrificing their land to logging or mining interests.
While the Hewa possess millennia of observations about nature, they have no economic prospects beyond traditional subsistence. They now see a conservation area as an opportunity to develop an economic base that will improve their lives without sacrificing their land to logging or mining interests. So, our first step was to build on my relationship with Tama to assemble and spread the wealth by building and paying a team of local experts. Over the years of working there, I developed a reputation as a willing student who paid for the most knowledgeable mentors. This made it easy to attract the finest Hewa teachers to a project we named the Forest Stewards.

New Forest Stewards on the Pori River. Photo: William Thomas
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William Thomas landing in Hewa territory in 2007. Photo: Porgera Joint Venture
In the initial stage of the project, there were many more applicants for Forest Steward positions than we could accommodate. Positions are filled through public, competitive examinations wherein the applicants first identify each of the 177 birds found here. Those who make it through the first day are asked to identify the seed dispersers and pollinators from a random selection of twenty trees. We currently have eighty teachers — one for each clan’s territory. They are charged with teaching at least one apprentice so that their knowledge and paid position can move to the next generation. Apprentices are then periodically tested in public so that the community understands that these are important positions for qualified individuals, not nepotism.

A cassowary, PNG’s largest bird. Photo: Bruce Beehler
Since the Hewa need to garden to sustain themselves, the Stewards manage the higher altitude forest that has not been cut and the forests that mark their clan boundaries. These forested drainages have become game corridors that thread between the scattered gardens and successional forest, linking primary forests across the valleys. The Stewards have banned hunting in these corridors and this, when combined with the return of the forest, has provided a safe haven for some of the region’s most charismatic birds. In particular, New Guinea’s largest bird, the cassowary, is using these corridors to travel through garden areas to its preferred habitat — the primary forest.
The Forest Stewards project is an example of a community recognizing that its most valuable resources are its language, customs, and relationship with the natural world. Rather than selling off their resources, the Hewa are betting that they can build a future on their traditions and ability to manage their biological inheritance. The application process to formally establish their lands as a conservation area has required that we work with provincial and national conservation agencies. It has also attracted the attention of politicians at all levels, as we publicly demonstrated, through open-air meetings attended by hundreds of Hewa, that the project has the required “prior and informed consent.” This, in turn, has been noticed by the national office of the Climate Change and Development Authority, which is looking for projects that show local support as well as a mechanism for monitoring forests. Since carbon markets offer a sustainable source of income to landowners, we are pursuing carbon financing options that will promote not only biodiversity conservation but also the conservation of Hewa culture. For the Hewa, with their traditionally low footprint, carbon financing is an easy fit.
The community’s most valuable resources are its language, customs, and relationship with the natural world.

Traditional dress for singing celebration. Photo: William Thomas
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My Hewa teachers understand that, at the small scale of forest-based horticulture, creative disturbance fosters biodiversity, while large-scale deforestation and mining deplete it, and were able to make these effects explicit. This alone makes them the most knowledgeable and most capable of managing this globally significant ecosystem. And I am willing to bet that I could find a similar set of teachers elsewhere who understand how their actions shape other globally significant landscapes. Such knowledge can give traditional landowners some control over their lands and future. It creates a vital niche for Indigenous Peoples, whose insights on ecosystems can bring about conservation outcomes more rapidly and efficiently than Western scientific field research.
Applying traditional knowledge may well be the most true-and-tested conservation-based development strategy.
As long as all parties recognize that the protection of a biodiverse landscape comes as a type of deed restriction on the lands, applying traditional knowledge may well be the most true-and-tested conservation-based development strategy. Since the Hewa know that their lands’ biodiversity is tied to gardening, they understand that development will depend on their willingness to conserve the biologically diverse mosaic they now possess. This calls for maintaining a light human footprint — which, in turn, might mean rethinking the schools and health centers that are often the “carrots” offered as motivators for participating in conservation programs. These services are quintessential magnets — concentrating people and drastically altering landscapes within walking distance. Is this concentration of people a good thing, creating islands of development in seas of biodiversity? Or is it a trojan horse for killing off the biodiversity that attracted the conservation-based development infrastructure in the first place?
If these are the trade-offs, limiting the human footprint might be a bargain that is hard for people to contemplate. Yet, it is a bargain that has to be struck if we hope to continue to see cultural diversity go hand in hand with biodiversity. Building their future around conservation will give the Heiwa more control over their lands than dealing with a logging or mining company. What other paths to development might be pursued in this scenario? That is the conundrum that the Heiwa (and communities all over the world) are facing. The answers to this conundrum will determine what shape the future will take.

Mari, Forest Steward Axel’s child, attending a sing-sing. Axel is one of the Forest Stewards. Photo: William Thomas
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Support the Cause: Learn more about the Forest Stewards Initiative at newguineaconservation.org
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William Thomas earned a PhD in anthropology from Arizona State University. He has been recognized by UNESCO’s Management of Social Transformations Program (MOST) for his development of one of the world’s Best Practices Using Indigenous Knowledge.