Monitoring and evaluation of an enterprise-based strategy for wildlife conservation in the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area (Papua New Guinea)

This dissertation investigates the relationship between community benefits from research-based tourism enterprises and the use and management of wildlife by indigenous Gimi and Pawaia landholding groups in the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The introduction reviews central arguments of community-based conservation to demonstrate how secure land tenure and community authority for fauna management in PNG provide a unique setting in which to test the predicted limits of community-based conservation. The first chapter examines biological sustainability of wildlife capture and trade by 16 landholding groups in 2 villages. A comparison of annual harvest of the most heavily-utilized species Casuarius bennetti to estimates of sustainable harvest reveal that a capture rate of 0.07 per km 2 in one catchment is unsustainable and that of 0.06 per km 2 in another catchment borders on the threshold of unsustainable use. The second chapter investigates performance by village Wildlife Management Committees to regulate wildlife use under arrangements of co-management with State and non-governmental organization (NGO) actors. A comparison of 3 committees in Crater Mountain with committees in 11 WMAs reveals that social costs of enforcement exceeded benefits such that the status quo of wildlife use was seldom changed. State actors were associated with increased enforcement while NGO actors were associated with an increase in committee meetings, training and economic benefits. The third chapter evaluates associations between household income from enterprises and amount of wildlife capture and trade by 16 landholding groups in 2 villages. The amount of wildlife trade was negatively correlated with the proportion of households within a group that received enterprise income but not with the proportion of household income from enterprises. The final chapter compares recommendations for monitoring and adaptive management of conservation and development projects to results from this case. Findings show that it was feasible, through collaboration with research institutions and community members, to design and implement a monitoring program that was used to evaluate and adapt assumptions about the relationship between socioeconomic conditions and the conservation of biodiversity.