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(click
here to view areas in the region where we work)
The three primary areas of interest where the Melanesia Center for Biodiversity
Conservation (CBC) is concentrating its efforts are in the Milne Bay
Province of Papua New Guinea, and the Mamberamo Raya Basin and
Raja Ampat Islands located in Papua Province, Indonesia. Each of
these sites falls within the New Guinea High Biodiversity Wilderness Area,
which is one of just three remaining areas on the Earth.
Milne Bay Province supports Papua New Guinea's largest coastal, island,
and reef ecosystems, as well as significant upland and montane forest wilderness.
The upland forest block is dominated by the Greater Mt. Suckling Massif,
which ranges eastward to Mt. Dayman, Mt. Simpson, and Mt. Thomson. This
combination of rich diverse marine and insular ecosystems with major upland
watersheds and pristine montane forest tracts makes the Milne Bay region
globally significant for biodiversity. There is no other landscape as ecologically
diverse in all of New Guinea. By working closely with the provincial and
local level governments, the CBC is developing this program as a model for
ecosystem-wide development that can be applied in other parts of Papua New
Guinea and throughout Melanesia.
The largest and least-disturbed tropical humid forest catchment on the island
of New Guinea is the Mamberamo Raya Basin - which essentially covers
the entire northern watershed of western New Guinea. The Mamberamo is Papua's
most important terrestrial biodiversity resource. Significantly larger and
more biodiverse than the more famous Lorentz National Park, the Mamberamo
region is almost entirely underdeveloped. The Basin encompasses nearly 8
million hectares, including the northern front range of the central mountains
of New Guinea (which reach altitudes of more than 4,000 m), tropical lowlands,
floodplains, swamp forests, and freshwater marshes. The region has an extremely
low human population (one estimate places the number of residents at 7,000
inhabitants) and is more than 93 percent forested, making it a vast, intact
storehouse of globally significant biodiversity.
Much like insular Milne Bay in easternmost Papua New Guinea, the Raja
Ampat Islands ecosystem located off the Bird's Head (Vogelkop) of westernmost
Papua, is immensely rich, physiogeograhically diverse, and endowed with
considerable endemic terrestrial biodiversity. This region has some of the
most biodiverse coral reefs in the Coral Triangle, as well as complex island
environments worthy of conservation, especially on Waigeo and Batanta islands.
The Raja Ampat ecosystem is globally significant, both for its marine biota
and its endemic terrestrial fauna.
The Melanesia CBC is also conducting important fieldwork in New Caledonia
(Mt. Panie), Fiji (Sovi Basin), New Britain (Wide Bay), and mainland
Papua New Guinea (Lakekamu Basin and Aroma Coast). While these projects
are not as large as the three discussed above, they address biodiversity
resources critical to the overall CBC conservation plan for Melanesia.
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© Conservation International.
Photo by Haroldo Castro |
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| Sepik river - Papua New Guinea. |
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© Conservation International.
Photo by Haroldo Castro |
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| Trobrian Islands dancers- Milne Bay,
Papua New Guinea. |
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| © Conservation International.
Photo by Jamie Bechtel |
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| Islands - Raja Ampat, Indonesia. |
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