The New Guinea challenge: development and conservation in societies of great cultural and biological diversity: The human footprints; Community Infrastructure Footprints; Agirculture and Development Footprints; Regional Ecological Communities; Conservation and Protection Areas of Various types and tenures; Priority Conservation Areas; Action for a Conservation Landscapes; Capacity Building; Conservation Challenges; New Guinea Region Statistics; Data sources, References and Acknowledgements;

Abstract

The main map shows that higher population densities occur (i) around and inland from major coastal towns, (ii) in the elevated PNG Highlands (H) and the Baliem Valley (B) of Papua, and (iii) along most of the coasts of the mainland and major islands. The distributions of inhabited places and of annual fires reveal that people and their effects are widely dispersed across much of the landscape. However, vast landscapes in the upper catchments of the Mamberamo River (M) in Papua and in parts of the upper Fly River (F) and Sepik River (S) in PNG remain sparsely inhabited.