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PNG: Greenpeace launches station to protect forest
Greenpeace launches rescue station to protect rainforest 'Paradise'
Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, February 28, 2006: Greenpeace today launched a major initiative to help protect Asia Pacific's last remaining ancient rainforests - the so-called 'Paradise Forests' (1) - by unveiling its Global Forest Rescue Station in a remote part of Papua New Guinea.
"Papua New Guinea's Kuni tribe has invited
Greenpeace to set up this
'Global Forest Rescue Station'
on their land. It will be a base to fast-track boundary
marking the tribe's territories to save them from the
logging industry and to showcase eco-forestry initiatives to
the world," said Greenpeace Australia Pacific's Chief
Executive Officer, Steve Shallhorn.
Greenpeace volunteers from around the world will live and work alongside local landowners and eco-forestry trainers at the Global Forest Rescue Station, sited at Lake Murray in Western Province. They will help three Lake Murray tribes establish their rights over approximately 300,000 hectares of tribal territories by identifying, marking out and mapping their boundaries. This will help them protect the forests from destructive and illegal logging.
The launch was heralded by the arrival in Port Moresby of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, which received a traditional welcome by tribal groups and landowners. Ken Mondiai, Head of the EcoForestry Forum, a network of environment groups working with Greenpeace, said: "We are honoured to welcome the Rainbow Warrior to mark the beginning of this exciting new approach to eco-forestry in Papua New Guinea.
Kuni clan leader, Sep Galeva, said: "We want to say no to loggers who come in and destroy everything. We want to do small scale logging by the landowners in a way that is sustainable and environment friendly."
The Paradise Forests are being logged faster
than any other on Earth.
In Papua New Guinea, less than
one per cent of them have any form of protection and more
than a quarter of a million hectares of primary forest are
destroyed each year. Globally, an area of ancient forest the
size of a football pitch is destroyed every two seconds to
grow products like soya for animal feed or to make products
like toilet paper, wooden flooring and plywood.
"This new initiative is part of a global effort to protect the world's last ancient forests (2). Unless action like ours in Papua New Guinea is taken worldwide, vast numbers of species of plants and animals will become extinct, rainfall patterns will be disrupted and the global climate will change even faster than it is now," said Greenpeace Asia Pacific Chief Executive Officer, Steve Shallhorn.
After Port Moresby,
the Rainbow Warrior will sail on "Forest Crime
Patrol"
to draw attention to ongoing illegal logging across the
entire region and to promote sustainable
forestry.
Greenpeace is an independent, campaigning organisation, which uses non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems, and to force solutions essential to a green and peaceful future. It is committed to protecting the world's last ancient forests and the people and animals that depend upon them.
Greenpeace
Greenpeace exists because this fragile earth deserves a voice.
Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning organisation that acts to change attitudes and behaviour, to protect and conserve the environment and to promote peace.
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