Papuan Canoe

Early morning in the Kikori River Delta of Papua New Guinea, and a man paddles to work in his canoe. I was heading out in a speedboat (we slowed down to not swamp the man in the canoe), to run palm transects in a tract of flooded forest (see Ten Years Ago in Papua New Guinea).  [NOTE: Image was scanned from a slide and the quality is not as good as I would have liked. Sorry].

Accommodations

About 15 years ago I spent the night in this rather large house in the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea (see Palms of Kikori, PNG and Ten Years Ago in Papua New Guinea). And then walked up into the forest and looked for palms the next day. I remember it was real steep. Lot of slipping and falling down on my part. [NOTE: This is my signature move in the field]. 

Cutting Xylocarpus

Small community sawmill in the Kikori River floodplain of Papua New Guinea (see Village Sawmill in PNG). The beautiful red wood is mangrove cedar (Xylocarpus granatum Koenig), a local timber species in the mahogany family (Meliaceae). The wood was harvested using protocols developed by the Kikori ecoforestry project (see Palms of Kikori, PNG). Lucas Mill courtesy of the World Wildlife Fund, but that's another story. [NOTE: The sawyer has a mask for the dust, and headphones for the noise, yet is barefoot].

Typo

Sign at the entrance of the Kikori sawmill in Papua New Guinea (see Palms of Kikori, PNG and Living on a Log Raft). The information presented is correct and the sign is really quite nice. Just a little problem with the spelling of the word "sustainably". [NOTE: I was in the U.S. when they put up the sign. When I finally saw it, I remember I grimaced - and then complimented them on their initiative and told them how great it looked].  

Pneumatophores

Xylocarpus granatum, an important timber species in Papua New Guinea (see Palms of Kikori), develops an abundance of aerial roots called pneumatophores. We don't really know why some trees (e.g. bald cypress, mangroves) produce these things. Some researchers think pneumatophores help trees get oxygen in flooded environments; others suggest that these aerial roots provide stability and structural support in mushy soils.  All I know is that they make walking through the forest extremely tricky when its flooded (see Wet Feet). [NOTE: The fact that  a tree doesn't die after its pneumatophores are removed would suggest that the stability in mushy soils hypothesis provides the most reasonable explanation for these structures].

Chain of Custody

All the logs that came into the mill at Kikori (see Living on a Log Raft and Palms of Kikori) had to be labeled with a code showing the species, the felling cycle/date, and the site of origin. This was done to insure that the communities weren't cutting more than they should, i.e. that they were only harvesting the annual growth of merchantable timber in their forests. This type of log labeling represents one step in the chain of custody process required for forest certification by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Living on a Log Raft

As part of the PNG ecoforestry project, we set up a small sawmill in the town of Kikori to process timber harvested from local flooded forests. The forests along this part of the Kikori River are tidal, and they flood - and drain - every day with the tides.   Landowners who wanted to sell their timber to the mill were required to go through a training program where they learned the basics of sustainable forestry, inventory the forests they wanted to harvest, and write a detailed management plan. Participating communities were given lots of technical assistance as they struggled with these tasks.

A group of landowners showed up at the mill one day and said they wanted to join the project. I looked at a map and discovered that their community was located way downriver in the Kikori estuary.  When I asked them if they had a boat to pull logs, they shook their heads.  I had serious doubts about their ability to get sawlogs to the mill, and I was reluctant to commit to the training and inventory work if neither the mill nor the community would ever benefit. As a compromise, I suggested that they go back to their village and fell some trees, and if they were able to get the logs to Kikori somehow, the project would be happy to collaborate with them. And I promptly forgot about the whole incident.

Two weeks later, the group came back to Kikori.  They had gone back to their village, felled a few trees, and tied them together into rafts.  They floated up the Kikori River as far as they could each day with the rising tide, and when the tide started to fall, they tied up next to the bank and waited for the river to start rising again the next morning.  It took them five days to get to Kikori, sleeping on top of their logs. We gave them a bite to eat and enthusiastically welcomed them to the project. [NOTE: We rented a boat to bring their next load of logs to the mill].