Politically, New Britain is a part of Papua New Guinea but geographically, it’s a part of the Bismark Island chain and represents the largest island in the designated biologic hotspot of the East Melanesian Islands. This long string of islands runs from north of Papua New Guinea southeast into the Pacific Ocean. For many species, millennia spent isolated on these mostly volcanic outposts have resulted in very high levels of endemism. A few species include the New Britain Water Rat and the Sanford’s fish eagle. That isolation has also created a landscape of remarkable cultural diversity. On New Britain alone, thirty plus distinct languages are spoken.
Much of that cultural integrity is still in tact, but since New Britain’s first substantial contact with the western world in the 1880s, parts of the island have seen rapid change and a push toward development. Throughout the rule of three different colonial empires, WWI and WWII battles, contact with the outside world was refined to the coastlines. But the past fifty years have seen a rapid expansion of the oil palm and logging industries. It has created a labor vacuum and has made West New Britain, Papua New Guinea’s second most diverse province. Though the industry is still largely confined to the lowlands, the crop has expanded annually by six percent and is beginning to following international logging operations into New Britain’s highlands. The tradeoff many indigenous tribes are making is the environmental integrity of their customary lands for roads and better access to education, medicine, jobs and overall development. It has left only 25 percent of the region’s forests in tact.
The goal of our Conservation through Exploration expedition was to show local tribes, such as the Nakanai, that eco-tourism and conservation could be alternative forms of development.
