Madang Province, Papua New Guinea
When logging companies showed up in Filip Damen's village of Wanang, hidden deep in the country's lowland tropical rainforests, with a suitcase full of cash, the subsistence farmer knew accepting the bribe would have catastrophic results for his people and their way of life.
Rather than take the quick cash, Damen organized 11 Wanang clans to establish a conservation deed on 25,000 acres of forests in 2000. When the Papua New Guinea government began pressuring the Wanang to sell their land for logging in 2006, Damen sought help from grassroots Binatang Research Center, convincing them that his people's forests were worth conserving. To make up for the lost income logging would have provided, he mobilized the Wanang to build labs, accommodations, and a helicopter pad for researchers enticed by the natural splendor of the forests. Soon, the villagers also began contributing to ongoing research, chronicling their traditional uses for native plants and aiding a study of local insects featured in the journal Nature.
Today, the Wanang's preserve is Oceania's first large-scale, permanent forest research plot and—with the advent of carbon credit trading—it has become a valuable commodity for measuring forest biomass and carbon absorption. In addition to the Binatang Research Center, the Wanang have partnered with scientists at Smithsonian Institution and Harvard University to tag, measure, and map trees—research that provides valuable data on forest that helps scientists combat global climate change.
Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka
Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda
Travelers inspired to see gorillas in the wild provide half of Uganda's tourism revenue making the health of the animals essential to the livelihoods of many poor communities. But human disease has ravaged the wild population—scabies, brucellosis, foot-and-mouth disease, and tuberculosis are common among gorillas here—imperiling the species and putting a serious dent in tourism revenue. Dr. Gladys, as she is known locally, founded Conservation Through Public Health in 2002 (CTPH) to improve the health of Uganda's gorillas by focusing on the health of the people.
Dr. Gladys worked with local health clinics to treat people and in turn better control the spread of tuberculosis, scabies, HIV/AIDS, and dysentery in the forest's gorilla population. She also created a network of volunteers who educate Bwindi communities through skits, workshops, and brochures about health. Dr. Gladys also treats sick gorillas and in doing so devised a system for testing gorilla fecal samples for early signs of disease. With park rangers trained to recognize signs of illness, Dr. Gladys has been able to treat infected gorillas before they spread sickness deeper into the wild population and helping gorillas and humans live in symbiosis.
Benki Piyako became a paje, the most important leadership role in his Ashaninka community, when he was just a child. Today he is the most active indigenous leader in Brazil having created a system for profiting from and protecting rainforests that has been replicated in 20 regions of the Amazon.
Piyako's revolutionary system started with simple mapping. With the help of the University of Campinas, he took inventory of native plants, animals, and soils, identifying which could produce income for the community and which needed to be better preserved. The Ashaninka began selling seeds and handmade wood carving, and breeding turtles and bees so that they wouldn't need the money loggers were constantly offering them. In addition, he set up Agri-Forest Agents who patrol the area and enforce rules agreed upon by the entire community. After seeing the Ashaninka's success, the government of Acre hired 69 agents who network with other indigenous groups, sharing strategies and forest management techniques. To spread his knowledge, Piyako opened a school teaching rainforest management to indigenous people in 2007, with courses that include seed collection, beekeeping, fish breeding, and turtle preservation.
In 2009 Brazil recognized Piyako's work, awarding him the country's Order of Cultural Merit.