Rainforest Trust

The Tenkile Conservation Alliance (TCA) and the Rainforest Trust began working together in May 2024. Our project’s principal aim is to legally protect the Torricelli Mountain Range either as a Protected Area and/or as a Conservation Deed. We will also be monitoring the forests using camera traps, the Protected Area Monitoring app and strengthening our ranger workforce.  Our online presence and infrastructure will go through a transformation and improve from this partnership. TCA aims to build better sustainable financing systems to support our work well into the future.

There are four primary objectives:

Objective 1. Establish the Torricelli Mountain Range Protected Area (formerly known as the Conservation Area but now called the Protected Area due to the newly approved Protected Area Bill endorsed by the PNG government).

Objective 2. Establish legal protection of the Torricelli Mountain Range with a Conservation Deed.  Legally recognised by the local and Provincial Governments in collaboration with the 226 clan leaders representing 43 villages.

Objective 3. Strengthen the Protected Area monitoring and management of the Torricelli Mountain Range.  This will include PAM app, camera trapping, training with our Ranger workforce, working with villages to do mapping, land-use planning and improving governance.

Objective 4. Establish a sustainable source of finance and support via a Payment for Environmental Services (PES) or equivalent scheme for the Torricelli Mountain Range Protected Area.

Land Use Planning

A lot of work will take place with Clan leaders, Landowners and Village elders to increase and improve each of our village’s land-use plans. Since 2007 TCA has done land-use planning with our villages and we’ve noticed and realised is that it an ongoing process and project. Clan leaders and Landowners change with people dying or getting old and handing over responsibilities. Land boundaries also change overtime, with different land uses such as booms with the cash crops cocoa and vanilla. The decisions on the land are always changing, so we have to be consistent with this work and have it a regular component of the organisation. The support from Rainforest Trust will mean regular contact, training, learning and capacity building with the Torricelli Mountain Range land decision makers. Clan boundaries will be concluded via GPS, as well as more accurate boundaries of the proposed Torricelli Mountain Range Conservation Area (TMRCA).

We will also start work on eco-corridors, both with land-use plans and from establishing a nursery at TCA Base-Lumi. Some villages may be ready within the next few years to start revegetation in designated land for eco-corridors.