Welcome to WWF Papua New Guinea

An Island of Extraordinary Biodiversity

Both Opportunities and threats coexist in New Guinea

Sir Alfred Russell Wallace, the famous biologist of the 19th century remarked that New Guinea

“contains more strange and new and beautiful objects than any other part of the globe.”

The island of New Guinea stands with the Amazon, the Serengeti Plains and the Great Barrier Reef as one of the great natural jewels of this planet with:

  • The world's third largest block of unbroken tropical rainforest
  • As many bird and plant species as nearby mega-diverse Australia in one-tenth the land area
  • More orchid species than any other place on earth
  • The most extensive and most diverse mangroves in the world
  • Home to almost all of the world's species of birds of paradise and tree kangaroos
  • The world's largest pigeon, smallest parrot and longest lizard
  • Some of the richest, most extensive and most pristine coral reefs in the world
  • Almost one-fifth of the world's human languages (1100)
© Brent Stirton/Getty Images/WWF-UK

And while globally remarkable, New Guinea's forests and rivers are even more important to the seven million people who depend on them daily for their food, shelter and medicine. More than 80% of the island's people live in rural areas and follow a largely subsistence lifestyle, highly dependent on natural resources for their food security and to meet basic needs. Poverty in some parts of the islands matches that of the poorest countries in Africa, with average rural income just US$25 per year. Poverty will become even more extreme if habitats are lost, harvests of natural resources are not managed at sustainable levels, and if alternative livelihoods are not developed.

From Glaciers to Reefs

Few places on earth rival the diversity of New Guinea. Habitats vary from tropical heaths and grasslands, cload forests, savannas, mangroves and swamp forest. Glacier melt waters flow into tropical rainforests and mangroves from high mountains towering over 5000 meters.

The island is split between the country of Papua New Guinea in the east and the Indonesian province of Papua (formerly Irian Jaya) in the west. It now contains the largest tract of primary tropical forest remaining in Asia Pacific. Vast areas of forest continue to support harpy eagles, the great flightless cassowaries, cuscus and the astonishing birds of paradise.

Some of the world's great rivers flow through these forests incuding the Asmat and Mamberano River Basins in Papua and the majestic Sepik river and lake country in PNG. The unique fish life of the Fly and Strickland Rivers and 12 endemic rainbow fish of Lake Kutubu mark New Guinea as one of the geat freshwater fish areas of the world.

With more than five percent of the world's species in less than one percent of its land area and around two third's of which are unique to the island, New Guinea stands out clearly as a global hotspot of biodiversity.

Customary Land Tenure and Stewardship

In Papua New Guinea, 97% of the country's land is owned and managed under customary tenure and stewardship, and communities have the final say in all resource management decisions. Community tenure is also increasingly recognised in Papua. Rural people in all parts of the island are expressing a strong interest in and support for efforts that help them improve their management of the natural resources upon which their livelihood depend and there is a growing sense of partnership within local communities.

WWF PNG Country Programme

Given it's rich resources and resounding beauty in urgent need of proper management and protection, WWF has a large programme based in Papua New Guinea dating back to 1990 when the South Pacififc Programme was established in region.

In terms of conservation, PNG contains globally significant freshwater, forest and marine habitats. The WWF Global 200 Ecoregions map identifies areas of the very highest biological importance on the planet.

New Guinea, with its unique tree kangaroos, birds of paradise and over 20,000 species of plants, is recognised as one of the top priorities for global conservation action. Nine of the Global 200's 142 terrestrial ecoregions are in New Guinea, making up 4% of the Global 200 Ecoregions.

The ecoregions range from coastal mangroves, extensive lowland rainforests, mountain cloud forests, sub-alpine grasslands, and the tallest mountains east of the Himalayas, which include an equatorial glacier. Remarkable species diversity and endemism place the island among the world's top ten places for biodiversity. And unlike so many other ecoregions around the world, New Guinea remains in excellent condition with much of its forests intact, its waters unpolluted and its reefs bright with fish and coral. To keep it this way in the next century will take a major effort from a wide range of people and groups who are facing increasing pressures to develop PNG economically and politically through the use of its natural resources.

PNG was the first country in the world to adobt the WWF ecoregions as the basis for its environmental planning systems, which it termed "Conservation Planning Regions". WWF works closely with PNG's Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) on its national planning framework for biodiversity strategy and action planning, ensuring the necessary resources are there to implement sustainable use and managed protection programmes.

New Guinea's Terrestrial & Marine Global 200 Ecoregions

From Seas to the Glacier