12 more protected areas for Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea is adding 12 more protected areas. Papua New Guinea currently has one of the lowest coverage of protected area in the world. The 12 additions will bring the current protectd area land total to around 4 per cent. The proposed protected areas are in Madang, the Sepik River, Mount Bosavi (Southern Highlands and Western Provinces), and the TransFly (Western Province), which together will add a further 771,451ha to Papua New Guinea’s protected area, an increase by almost 50 per cent. Local communities own all the protected areas, and the management practices will be developed and run by the communities themselves. Papua New Guinea has the largest block of tropical rainforest in the Asia Pacific, the largest and healthiest wetlands in the region and some of the richest coral reefs on earth.