The work, project by project.

In partnership with the Rainforest Trust since May 2024, TCA is working to legally protect the Torricelli Mountain Range — as a Protected Area and through a Conservation Deed — while strengthening forest monitoring, the ranger workforce, online infrastructure, and long-term sustainable financing.

Objectives

• Establish the Torricelli Mountain Range Protected Area, under PNG's newly approved Protected Area Bill.
• Secure legal protection through a Conservation Deed, recognised by local and Provincial Governments with the 226 clan leaders representing 43 villages.
• Strengthen monitoring and management — the PAM app, camera trapping, ranger training, village mapping, land-use planning and governance.
• Establish sustainable finance through a Payment for Environmental Services (PES) or equivalent scheme.

Funded by Perth Zoo, the Rokrok Meri’s build TCA’s ranger workforce with a new group of female rangers. Rokrok is Tok Pisin for frog and meri means women — and since women are the traditional frog-hunters, they are the ideal people to study PNG’s frogs. Eighty-six women will join the 86 male rangers, recording frogs on the Protected Area Monitoring app.

Objectives

• Purchase 86 smartphones loaded with the Protected Area Monitoring app (43 bought, 43 to go).
• Update the monitoring app with the new staff and information on PNG frogs.
• Build capacity for field management.
• Deliver training with the Rokrok Meri’s at TCA Base-Lumi each May and August.

A five-year programme, “Strengthening non-state actor involvement in Forest Governance in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea,” led by BirdLife International and funded by the European Union (€355,659 to TCA). Working with the University of PNG and partners across the region, it empowers communities and NGOs in forest monitoring, conservation and policy.

Objectives

• Run capacity-building workshops for communities, including carbon and biodiversity assessments toward REDD+.
• Train stakeholders in forest governance and strengthen TCA’s own institutional governance.
• Use UPNG’s GIS and remote-sensing centre to monitor forests and map land-use plans.
• Engage directly in national forest-management policy.

Project P636, “Mapping and Monitoring the Torricelli Mountain Range Conservation Area,” funded by the BIOPAMA Action Component — an OACPS initiative financed by the European Union. It addressed TCA’s biggest gap in protected-area management effectiveness: equipment. The grant supplied the hardware and training to collect and manage data from the Conservation Area and its communities.

Objectives

• Clarify and communicate boundaries — GIS mapping training for staff, equipment, and community engagement using SMART, Cybertracker and Lukim Gather.
• Produce large-scale printed maps for landowners and governments, for inclusion in Local and Provincial forest plans.
• Build field-management capacity, including equipment maintenance and basic research.

“Kamapim Pawa” brings off-grid solar power to the Torricelli. Villagers had asked for electrification for years — “mi les long stap long tudak,” they said: I am sick of living in the dark. In partnership with Australia’s Pawarim Komuniti program and Solar Solutions PNG, every household receives its own solar lighting, with street lights for the villages.

Objectives

• Install household solar lighting for every home in the project area.
• Distribute 350 solar street lights so women and children can move safely at night.
• Survey households via a custom ‘Solar survey app’ feeding the Mother Nature data portal.
• Secure Free, Prior & Informed Consent, with each household paying 10% so the system is truly theirs.