Conservation and Community In The Managalas Plateau
by Nancy Sullivan

There's a large plateau in Oro Province that lies protected by a circle of mountain ranges and under the shadow of towering Mt. Lamington. It's called Managalas Plateau. A peaceful place of roughly 10,000 people in hundreds of clan groups, the Managalas is something like Oro Province's 'Brigadoon'-an oasis of 'time before' back beyond Port Moresby and nestled between the Owen Stanley, the Sibium and the Hydrographer Ranges. So close, and yet so very far from the Capital. This is a place where the kids speak tok ples, women walk safely to the rivers to wash, and people greet you warmly when you arrive as a stranger in their village. This is PNG the way we all imagine it to be, the way so many people hope it will still be when they finally leave town and go back to live in the village.

This is also an area that has dedicated itself to conservation and sustainable development. The Managalas Sustainable Development Project is the collaborative effort of the Managalas peoples, the NGO Partners With Melanesians, and a handful of other funding organizations. Its objective is to preserve the biological resources of the Plateau and promote sustainable development at the same time, with the long term hope of establishing a Conservation Area on the Plateau. It is the sort of quiet, community-level project that gets discussed all over PNG, is hammered out over a long period of time, but most often falls away before its begun, under the least pressure from more profitable schemes. But not here. The Managalas people have organized themselves into ten culture zones with clan elders and facilitators in a Plateau-wide Forum, which works to build consensus around common sustainable development guidelines, and invite a variety of enterprises into the Plateau. Grafted to traditional leadership institutions, it is also intended to grant expanded authority over the land to the next generation. The Project uses all the tools available the multiple threats of logging, carpet-bagging NGO's and politicians, crime, urban drift, and the general erosion of their quality of life.

I took a walkabaut through the Plateau in 1999, along with Richard Brunton of Partners With Melanesians, and a few landowners and Zone leaders along the way. The idea was to see how some form of ecotourism could be established in the area. The areas biggest draw to outsiders has always been lepidoptera: its butterflies. The Managalas Plateau just happens to be the home of the world's largest birdwing butterfly, the Queen Alexandra Birdwing. About the size of two spread palms, or thirty centimetres, the Queen is just large enough to make you think you've fallen through the looking glass when she flaps by. But all kinds of butterflies flit above the flowering bushes in Managalas--it's one of the sparkling secrets of the place.

What we found during the walkabaut was a wonderful trekking destination for mildly to very fit walkers, both Papua New Guinean and foreign alike. MBA flew us in from Moresby to Itokama, in the southwest of the Plateau. The first night we stayed with one of the zone leaders, a wealthy businessman farmer who has built a 'haus kapa' with linoleum floors and plenty of rooms for all his wives and kids. As evening fell, we sat talking tourism by the light of a kerosene lamp with few local leaders translating to tok ples, while we passed shots of rum, and pigs honked beneath us and kids giggled in the doorways. The whole house swayed and trembled when anyone shifted against the wall, and yet when the zone leader's first wife brought us coffee, her shuffling was barely perceptible. Everyone remarked on a china cup and saucer set with the Prime Minister's insignia. This is a souvenir from a meeting with Bill Skate, they told me "Yu ting yu tasol gat Praim Minista?" a man named Marcus laughs. "Mipela tu, mipela gat PM bilong Plateau!"

From Itokama our route ran clockwise around the Plateau, to cross the Ujaya River, then pass Buambu hamlet, then Kokoro and the big village of Serefuna, where someone walked me through a garden to a tall beech tree where a male Raggiana Bird of Paradise was perched. There, as he did his very best to entice two of the local females, performing Full Monty in shimmering burnt orange, the ladies, perched on adjacent branches, seemed less than truly impressed, staring blankly back. Oh well, such is life.

From there, we walked two days through Koruwo, Jorura, Okapa, Ugunomo, Dea, and then across the Usia River and on to Numba, at the northeast corner of the Plateau. Once you reach Numba, it's only a day's walk east to Oro Bay, where you can catch a PMV to Popendetta, or walk a little longer south to Afore, where the mission is also connected by road to the coast. But within the Plateau, only one rough track serves coffee and oil palm buyers, and the sight of a vehicle is rarer than that of a plane. Through the bush, we washed in clear bubbling streams, and relaxed during light afternoon showers at roadside haus wins. T was just as we entered Karue hamlet that I spied a couple of very pale kids kicking a soccer ball. "Imas wantok bilong mi," I guessed, thinking they must be missionary kids or visitors. "Nogat, nogat," Marcus corrected me. "Tolai," he joked before adding: "Yu ting yu tasol gat Masta bilong ples?"

At Jorura, evening was falling and so we found a haus win, and settled down to food and hours of storytelling. There was the tale of a station manager who, expecting a new Aid Post Officer, set about decorating the road to the Aid Post with inflated condoms. A story about some friend who slept so heavily that they covered his body with flowers, took a shot of him, and when he woke, they told him he'd missed his own funeral. Then there were the tales of Sir Pita Lus in Parliament ("Mi laik dispela toktok go insait long Memba bilong Manus" and "Speaker! Speaker! What about this policy of 'pus pus North'?") which had us all howling. Finally, and no doubt to preserve the peace, an old man invited us into his house for the night, kindly vacating the two bedrooms to sleep by the fire with his grandaughter.

The start of our walk had taken us along the old Higatura oil palm road, which is now the coffee access road, through secondary regrowth and gardens, breaking out to views of long flat plains across the plateau to Afore. We walked on into the bush now, and into denser regrowth, then primary forest and increasingly more rugged terrain. The route had us scaling ridgetops villages and descending to cross clear rocky streams; twisting our aching feet in liana vines; and passing huge coral ferns and giant okari nut trees. There were tiny orchids and ginger flowers sprinkled across the undergrowth, and the undercanopy was filled squat high-altitude pandanus palms. We saw monitor lizards, Imperial Crown Pigeons, Brahminy kites, and happy hornbill couples soaring overhead. At our feet were fallen galip nuts, kapok seed pods, oil palm seeds and overripe pawpaw. At one point I disturbed a tree filled with tiger-striped butterflies that twinkled into disappearance. All the villages had buai trees banking their clearings, and in a couple of hamlets there seemed to be more of these high elegant palms than coconuts. This is the land of buai, where you only have to nod for someone to hand you a betelnut, the trees are so plentiful here.

Our destination, Numba, is a big village of 1009 people. It falls away from both sides of a wide well-swept path that descends to a market green and a river at the foot of town. The Zone leader, Kingsford, took us into his home where his cheerful wife served up kaukau with a delicious chile tomato sauce, its recipe the legacy of a nutritionist who once worked here. Numba is full of delightful surprises: Kingsford's father sits next to us in the house and we notice delicate tattoos all over his very fair, slackened skin. Later a neighbour of the same age joins us, and his tattoos are similar-but not exactly the same-running up their legs, across their chests, arms and backs. They were both initiated at the same time, roughly (what?) sixty years ago. Now the two friends are the sole survivors of that generation of initiates, living side by side in Numba.

Kingsford's father helped me learn a little tok Managalas. After strict repititons, I learned to express all the important things: 'Mavarasa'ina' or delicious; and 'A iraka vui hanujaho veje samaihiramo' or, Bring your thoughts into the open. 'Nuni omijaho mara ara hi jume pu uija anaahara' means: When my father was in the initiation house they tattooed his body. Perhaps the most useful of all was 'Ori ruha va'e masuani neji'i hina!'-Go to your room and sleep! (Yes, I'm thinking of writing a phrase book.)

This long weekend was an endless party, because all the zone leaders had converged in Numba for their biannual meeting.
People were housed everywhere, and I drew the lucky room of my own in the Pastor's house, where his kids kindly showed me the outhouse and the river for washing. The next couple of days were filled with daytime meetings and evenings card games, endless pots of tea, hours of storytelling and meal after meal after meal. It seemed like every time we got up from a multi-course meal, someone else was arriving with the next tray of food.

On Saturday, I was given the floor at one of the meetings to present the case for ecotourism. Last on the agenda, I wound up sitting through several hours of impressive, well-organized presentations and question-and-answer sessions. It was all remarkably uncontentious, reflecting how far along the Plateau was in the process of consensus building. All the paperwork I'd read on the Managalas Conservation Project, the discussions I'd had with Damien Ase, a Managalas lawyer with the Centre for Environmental Law and Community Rights, and the Chairman of Partners With Melanesians, are not, I realize, just words.

These people really did appear to think as one, agreeing on all the major points and ironing out the little ones with reasoned lucidity. At my turn to speak, everyone asked the appropriate questions and seems eager to hear more, so I planned an informal meeting later in one of the haus wins.

This was where the pros and cons of ecotourism really got hammered out, and where I took the best suggestions and learned the most about the different zones. The simple building soon became burdened by the crowd of women, men and children who wanted to hear more, drink tea and just hang out, hungry for an evening's entertainment. Husbands arrived with their wives, who spoke up with their own suggestions, and neighbors dropped pawpaws and kettles of hot water every few minutes. I soon heard about all the best sights and possible treks around the plateau, places I hope to get back to see: Caves of bats and back-end routes up Mt. Lamington, brilliant views and bird of paradise display trees. I learned that you can walk 6 hours northwest of Numba to Gora, where you can wait for a PMV or walk another six hours to Popendetta, which is the fastest way out by land. From Pop, there's a daily Air Niugini flight to Port Moresby. I also learned that beyond Gora there's an airfield at Asapa that's just been opened to Northcoast Aviation and MBA. In the other direction, walking northeast from Numba, towards Togofa, are the caves and rivers of Sigara, which everyone described as truly beautiful. Other walks include Sigara, Afore, Numba, then Silimbo, Kororo, Karamas and Itokama; or Afore to Toma, where there are gorges, and then to Imowate and Itokama. Everyone's guffaws when I pointed on the map to Dawadua, just above Numba, and Ulove, near Afore, warned me that both were really nonexistent villages. No one seemed to know how they got on the map, either, except as an insider's practical joke, which they've certainly succeeded in becoming. Maybe these hamlets are the real Brigadoons of the Managalas Plateau, reemerging from a fog to fool some mapmaker every generation or so. It might be worthwhile exploring for them.

Returning from Numba we took a counter-clockwise route back to Itokama, through Dea and on to Natanga for the night. Dea to Natanga is a beautiful walk, the second half of which becomes the 'Seven Steps' --seven climbs and descents, and six river crossings. The entire Plateau is within 600 to 1000 metres, so these climbs and descents weren't really extreme, just taxing. And we were rewarded on the last hour of the walk by fantastic views over the central Plateau from the hillside beneath Natanga. This was where Daniel, a Natanga bigman, and his brother Gibson, stopped me to point to a place where a special stone, shaped like a coiled snake, rests in the bush. Then they told me the story. A mother and daughter went fishing in the river nearby, but they couldn't catch anything. They kept fishing, but nothing would bite. Finally, the mother tells her daughter to stop trying and pack up. But the daughter can't hear her and she dawdles a little more. When they've both picked up their bundles to set home, it's already dark, so they decide to stay in a garden house nearby. But as they enter the house, all the snakes in the bush follow them and surround the house. The smallest snake of all gives the order for all of them to go in and kill the women. So they do, and they disembowel the women, eating through their bodies and hardening into kanda vines running from ass up through the mouths of the women. One snake came down and coiled itself around a stone, where it still lies today, as a reminder of this story.

Our group ascends to walk through the tidy ridgetop village of Natanga. Throngs of kids crowded us squealing and squeezing each other with disbelief. Daniel had persuaded us to take this route to his village so we would arrive like trophies won at the Zone Board Meeting. Someone barks "Klia! Klia!" as we made our way to a haus win where, with precision timing, it began to rain. The distant view of receding mountains fell under a dark cloud that unfurled like a heavy blanket toward us. We heated the kettle and broke out the biscuits, only to discover that Daniel had purloined the last Wopa packet for his infant daughter, who sat gurgling on his lap. Everyone who could make it up the ladder now crowded around to hear Richard, Marcus, Daniel and several of the older Natanga men talk about WWII. They explained how the Japanese came to Natanga first, from Oro Bay. 'Bloody Buna' is what they called Buna at Oro Bay, where the Japanese had their base in the War. (It's also the name of a book Marcus remembered reading about the War.) The Japanese would get resupplied in Oro Bay by ships from Rabaul. Then the Allies bombed one of these ships just outside Gona, where you can still see the mast in the harbor, and took Girua, the site of Popendetta's airport, as a base.

But the Japanese in Natanga laid claim to everyone's garden, so a lot of villagers fled to the bush. Someone mentioned to us that the Japanese also dug a big tunnel to store their ammunition-but no one knew where it was anymore. No one was imprisoned or interrogated, they told us. Just frightened. (Then someone talked about when the first kiaps came and all the kids screamed and wet themselves in fright.) When the Allies came inland, people remember seeing planes dropping bombs and being convinced the Allies would bomb them, too. That's when the Japanese went bush, some of them running off to Pungani and Gilalo. The Natanga people came back, started gardening for the Allies, and some even went searching for Japanese with them. Others went with soldiers Kokoda, as porters. The Allies brought salt, someone recalled. Meanwhile, the Japanese were starving in the bush. At some point a US 4-prop cargo plane with a man, a woman (probably a nurse) and a dog crashed just over the ridge where were sitting, and only the dog survived. The nose and engine could still be seen in the bush below.

After a restful night, we left Natanga around 9:30 AM and headed to Kiara, then Ambua and Umboware. Kiara has been newly constructed on a ridge above where the village burnt down in 1997. Someone seems to have taken to reconstruction with particular zeal, I noted as we passed a three-story pitpit house. "Ah," Marcus nodded, smiling. "Nogut yu ting yu tasol gat skaiskrepa bilong ples."

If you read through the available conservation literature on PNG, you realize how much of the country is still scientifically unknown. Even Tim Flannery, in his 1995 Mammals of New Guinea, acknowledges the work yet to be done, both in PNG and across the border in the much less studied Irian Jaya. It is a race against time now, in many places, to record the species diversity that may very well be lost by the whims of short-sighted landowners, politicians and resource developers.

Birds are the best known animal group in PNG. Because birds and butterflies were the two groups of greatest interest to the many European naturalists of the 19th C and early 20th C, many expeditions were funded by armchair European naturalists. In PNG, these resulted in excellent studies of the birdlife, butterflies and to a lesser extent, mammals and plant life, of several areas surrounding the Managalas Plateau: the Topographer's Range, Mt. Lamington, the Owen Stanleys, the Safia Savannah above the Owen Stanleys, and even Mt. Albert Edward (where, in 1981, Tim Flannery searched for yet-unnamed tree possums in the Neon Basin). It is thought that the Mt. Laimington/Popendetta area is especially rich in herpetofauna-frogs and lizards; but according to the 1993 Conservation Needs Assessment Report by the Department of Environment and Conservation and the Biodiversity Support Program, no formal study of the region has actually been made. If this area just north of the Managalas is so rich in lizards and frogs, and the Managalas itself is uniquely host to the Queen Alexandra (where it feeds on a vine at the top of the canopy that is poisonous to other species), what riches is this region hiding? A rare lizard, or another endemic butterfly? Maybe an echidna or tree possum we otherwise didn't know existed. It is a safe bet to say that flora and fauna species not yet named in English already exist in the Barai, Samoi and Managalas languages, and we need only ask a local to point them out.