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Subsistence hunting has sustained human populations in New Guinea for millennia, without seriously affecting the highest levels of biodiversity on Earth. Recent changes to hunting practices, demographic, social and economic context and the introduction of large exotic species has significantly altered the dynamic of hunting and its potential effects in north-west New Guinea. In this paper we examine contemporary hunting practices of six ethnic groups from highland to coastal sites throughout Papua and West Papua provinces of Indonesia. Semi-structured interviews were used to examine hunting practices as well as customary rules and attitudes associated with hunting in the region and how they have changed in living memory. Each group indicated traditional restrictions on at least one of target, tool, timing or tenure, albeit in varied ways. Six different hunting tools were used and each hunter typically combined several tools while hunting. Religious and cultural factors deeply influenced hunting practices among the communities. We discuss the implications of these findings and conclude with recommendations to integrate local, village level governance and customary practices with regional and national law for more effective conservation and management of wildlife in the region while simultaneously respecting cultural heritage and local ecological knowledge.

Road development is increasing worldwide. Generally, examples of road building in tropical countries demonstrate that road access can assist the fight against rural poverty, but such developments are also linked to deforestation, pollution, invasions of exotic species, and environmental degradation. For Papua and West Papua provinces (Tanah Papua) in Indonesia, the development of the provincial road network is intended to improve the rural economy, aiming to alleviate poverty within isolated rural areas. However, road development can pose particularly challenging problems to rural and Indigenous communities. Poorly planned roads can be devastating when they provide easy access to illegal hunting that threatens endangered species. In this study, we discuss how road development in Tanah Papua has changed indigenous hunting. Native Papuans have benefited from improved road access, which allows them to sell their agricultural products at local markets. Increased road connectivity has also changed how local people use natural resources and forest products, moving from subsistence to a more market-based orientation. Although policies on infrastructure development including roads form part of Indonesia’s national program, they are not automatically compatible with a sustainable development program in Tanah Papua. To foster more equitable and sustainable road development, government agencies must improve their overall coordination of further road expansion plans by promoting green infrastructure that supports the sustainable use of natural resources in a way that is reconciled with traditional knowledge of local people. Such efforts may also have positive effects on the efforts to protect biodiversity within the wider government conservation agendas.

This study investigated the factors that influence the home-range size of a tropical Australian rodent, Melomys cervinipes, using radio-tagged individuals. Melomys cervinipes frequently used the canopy and, when measured according to height level, its home-range areas were much larger than calculated by traditional two-dimensional home-range calculations. Home-range size did not significantly differ between the sexes, with an average home range of 0.42 0.06 ha and core area of activity of 0.091 0.074 ha. M. cervinipes did not maintain exclusive home ranges and overlapped with both other focal individuals and individuals not fitted with tracking devices. There was a relationship between the core range of M. cervinipes and individual trees of the dominant canopy species at the site. Core ranges of M. cervinipes included 2 (1.96 0.27) individual canopy trees independent of the area of that core range, whereas the number of individual trees within their total range was proportional to the size of that range. This suggests that M. cervinipes sets the core of its range to include a specific level of canopy resources regardless of the size required to achieve that level, but that its overall range is merely a representative sample of trees from the site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]