Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

The Foi in Papua New Guinea 101
have seen the warning sign in their own communities,
and this has paved the way for a stronger
partnership with conservation organizations.
IV. Partnership between WWF
and the Lake People
4.1 Establishing the Lake Kutubu Wildlife
Management Area
In 1988, Kone Yore, a community leader from
Tubage village, proposed that a national park be
established around Mt. Kemenagi, which rises
above Lake Kutubu at the southeastern end. The
community knew very little about what establishing
such a park would mean, but it supported the
idea of establishing an area in which resources
would be preserved for future generations. Kone
Yore visited the Department of Environment and
Conservation (DEC), which had jurisdiction of
protected areas in PNG, to discuss the matter. He
was surprised to hear that the National Parks Act
required that parkland be ceded to the state. The
community was not interested in surrendering
ownership, and the idea was temporarily dropped.
In 1989 Chevron Niugini cleared an area near
Gesege village to drill a test well. The community
expressed dissatisfaction with the K1,000
compensation paid by Chevron Niugini for the
clearing the site. The lake communities were
also increasingly concerned about the potential
impact of planned infrastructure, including the
access road from Pimaga to the oil fields and the
Moro airstrip. One community member, Sabe
Ko’osabe, wrote and later visited the DEC to discuss
the establishment of some sort of protected
area around Lake Kutubu that did not require surrender
of land ownership.
DEC suggested that a Wildlife Management Area
(WMA) could be established under the Fauna
(Protection and Control) Act 1978. A WMA does
not require the surrender of land to the Crown,
and does retain customary ownership. The act
essentially enables local communities to establish
rules for the management of fauna and flora habitat.
These rules are administered by a Wildlife
Management Area Committee (WMAC)
appointed by the landowners. The government
publicly registers a WMA once its boundary is
demarcated, the rules agreed upon, and the
WMAC members nominated. The rules then
have the force of law. Unlike a national park, a
WMA may be dissolved by landowners at any
time, or its rules amended or altered. Landowners
set the penalty for infringement of rules, and it is
largely up to the WMAC to enforce them, since
DEC has a very small rural presence.
For a WMA to be established, all landowners
must agree to the establishment and to the rules
of enforcement. Leaders from Gesege village
approached Chevron for assistance to engage a
consultant to help garner support for setting up a
management area and to prepare the paperwork
for registering it. Meetings were held in all of
the lake communities, and broad support
emerged to establish the Lake Kutubu Wildlife
Management Area. Each community defined the
boundaries of the land that members wished to
include, and made recommendations for the rules
of enforcement. The key issues that the community
wished to address were
• control of land clearing;
• appropriate compensation for land clearing
by the Kutubu Oil Project and others;
• the potential impacts of the Kutubu access
road;
• achievement of balanced development; and
• improved management of traditional
resources such as canoe trees, orchids, and
black palm.
In 1991, Chevron Niugini provided surveyors to
allow the boundary to be legally defined. In
April 1992, DEC was advised of the communities’
desire and readiness to establish Lake
Kutubu WMA, the proposed rules of enforcement,
the boundary description, and the members
of the WMAC. The WMA was publicly registered
on June 25, 1992, but for some reason the
rules were not included in the official notice.
4.2 WWF’s Involvement in Community
Research
In late 1993, prior to commencement of the
Kikori ICDP, WWF received a request from the
Lake Kutubu WMA to help prepare interim
management guidelines for the area. This assistance
was provided and, through extensive community
consultations, a more comprehensive set
of management procedures and rules was developed
in 1994.