It happened with a few strokes of a pen on a hilltop in northwestern Papua New Guinea on June 30: The leaders of the Tenkile Conservation Alliance (TCA) finalized an agreement to protect the densely canopied forests of the Torricelli Mountains that ripple outward in every direction. Their signatures were the last of hundreds collected from clan leaders across the range in June. With this conservation deed, TCA and the people of the Torricellis have achieved a key milestone after decades of work to stave off logging, help wildlife rebound and improve the lives of community members. After the signing, those gathered erupted in celebration, dance and song at TCA’s base in the village of Lumi. In all, 266 clan leaders signed the document. Caleb Bulu, a project manager with TCA, called it an “exciting time.” “We have been waiting for so long,” said Bulu, who has fought to keep loggers off his own land in the region. The people of the Torricelli Mountains were ecstatic, he said in a call via WhatsApp a few days after the signing. “They were very happy, all across the 41 villages [and] were celebrating at that time.” The Torricellis are home to a staggering array of species — perhaps 4% of the world’s biodiversity in a relatively tiny speck of mostly intact montane forest — including two species of critically endangered tree kangaroo. In the 1990s, mammologist Tim Flannery and his colleagues in PNG first described the tenkile (Dendrolagus scottae) and the weimang…This article was originally published on Mongabay
