YUS Conservation Area
The YUS Conservation Area spans about 760 square kilometers of rugged, mountainous terrain stretching from the coastal reefs of the Bismarck Sea to the approximately 4000-meter peaks of the Saruwaget and Finisterre Mountain Ranges. Defined by the watersheds of its three main rivers (Yopno, Uruwa, and Som), the YUS landscape spans two provinces (Morobe and Madang). The majority of the area lies within Morobe’s Kabwum District, the YUS local-level government area. The YUS landscape is also home to approximately 15,000 people living in 50 villages, in which seven different local languages are spoken. It is one of the primary ranges of the PNG tree kangaroo, a primary target species for conservation under LGP.
The YUS Conservation Area serves as a pilot and learning site for the national policy and management program, as it already has an extensive data and monitoring program that is used in management. Governance and management of the YUS Conservation Area rely upon stakeholders’ access to and application of relevant and timely data regarding the status of key biodiversity targets and priority natural resource availability throughout the YUS landscape. LGP activities include supporting the efforts to compile and utilize the management information platforms and engaging strategically with key partners within and across the Government, the private sector, and the civil society to discuss information management and use in the YUS landscape.
A major cross-cutting element LGP is to promote and help define the policies that would establish these Protected Areas as “gender-inclusive.” To that end, LGP and TKCP will support the implementation of the Protected Area Policy at the provincial level throughout the YUS Conservation Area as a learning landscape. YUS will also serve as a national- to province- to community-level pilot of the evolving policy framework with on-the-ground site interventions. As a landscape-level Protected Area, the communities’ ward-level land use plans play a vital role in collectively defining the YUS Conservation Area’s management plan by guiding local-level conservation action and informing government resource allocation throughout the landscape.
For TKCP in the YUS landscape, the primary work includes developing these frameworks and platforms collaboratively, creating pilots to advance the policies from national to provincial levels, compiling and implementing management information platforms, and engaging strategically with key partners within and across the Government, private sector, and civil society.
