Part III
THE FOREST
GUIDE, RANGER & THE FISHERMAN
THE rain comes down. A steady welcome
shower.
We have been walking in the forest for 10
minutes.
My guide touches my shoulder.
He nods his old head and cocks his ear. We
listen together. I can hardly hear anything in the rain, but he asks anyway.
“Kerema, yu harim? Em tasol, pisim ya wael
faul.” (Kerema, can you hear? That is the bird, the wild fowl).
My guide is Tony Taumu from Makasili
village near Hoskins. Tony is a passionate man when it comes to conservation in
his community.
On this day, he and other village elders shepherd
us to the Pokili hot springs to show us what they are doing to preserve their
heritage.
Everybody in the group has decamped for the
car park half a kilometre away, after spending an hour at one of West New
Britain’s most spectacular hot springs known as Pokili, deep in the forests of
Hoskins.
It’s stunning and breathtaking natural
formation. I’ve seen a sprinkling of hotsprings in life but this one is magnificent
in its steaming lake.
We resume our walk through the forest. Tony
knows every tree, every root, every soot and every herb. And every bird of the
air and ground. He can tell you the local name just by its call. He is a
bushman and an expert at wildlife. You have to admire his bushcraft.
Certain bird calls tell him where he is.
Certain trees signal his location. Even the wind in the branches are a sign of
what sort of weather is expected. Tony knows this forest like the palm of his
hand.
He is a man of the forest, brought up to understand
the law of the forest and its impact on the lives of his people. He and his
fellow leaders also recognize the devastating effect of climate change on their
people if the forest is lost to deforestation or degradation.
On this trip, organized by the UNDP under
its REDD+ program and supervised by the PNG Government’s Climate Change Office,
20 young journalists are participating in an important step to understanding
climate change and how the REDD+ works, mainly in developing countries.
The workshop was designed to give the local
journalists an understanding of REDD+, climate change and global warming so
they can effectively report when it comes to issues and news releases on REDD+.
West New Britain is also on the Pacific rim
of fire and hosts a number of active and dormant volcano.
Not far from Pokili is Mount Pago, its last
eruption recorded in 2012, an event that almost devastated the Pokili forestry
and laid waste to some of the villages.
Four decades ago, a logging concession was
awarded to a Japanese lumber company to log in the Hoskins area. However, when
the leaders of 10 villages in the area realized the devastating effects of
logging, they applied to the national government to stop logging in their part
of the logging concession.
They were successful and the area was
turned into the Pokili Wildlife Management Area, now managed by a committee
headed by Manuel Kosi from Koimumu village.
On his committee are Taumu and Bart Waka. Working
with them are five rangers who include Conrad Vavala and Gabby Porapora.
The WMA is huge and the work of the rangers
is tiresome, cumbersome at most times, a challenge, says ranger Conrad.
Earlier in the day, as our 4 wheel drive
lurches and sways over an uneven dirt road, Conrad tells me how he wanders in
the forest tracking egg poachers.
Like Taumu, Conrad is an expert in bush
craft and can easily detect time and movement of people in the bush by looking
at foot prints, disturbed flora and attempts by poachers to cover their tracks.
“Some people steal eggs from other people’s
land and so we have to keep track of who goes in and out of the forest,” he
says.
The megapode eggs are larger than the
normal sized chicken eggs. They are tasty and packed with healthy vitamins and
enriched minerals. They make a good substitute for protein.
On the commercial local market, an egg,
boiled or roasted over fire, sells fast for K2. A clutch of 24 eggs can fetch K48
in under an hour so the value of the egg is quite high and the demand
increasing among indigenes.
But in this forest, with the 10 villages of
Koimumu, Ubae, Lavege, Rapuri, Vavua, Tagaragara, Galilo, Karapi, Makasili and
Gulerikau, the population is expanding gradually. At nearly 8000 plus people,
there is added pressure on the land.
Each village is given a section of the
forest to harvest eggs says Conrad. However, some people with limited source of
income, especially palm oil, tend to stray into poaching.
Conrad says when he catches poachers, he
reports them to the local village court, which recommends an option of a
monetary fine or community work of cutting grass.
Most offenders opt to do community service
along the Pokili road and tracks. The road needs serious upgrading, which was
brought to the attention of the West New Britain Provincial Administrator Hosea
Williamson.
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