Conservation isn’t just about avoiding cutting down trees. Successful long-term conservation—particularly in places where lots of people live in, around and from the forest—needs to be much more strategic. Sometimes, keeping old-growth forests intact includes planting trees explicitly to be felled for timber or firewood and/or harvesting high-value products from them without destroying them.
An interesting case in point is the Managalas Conservation Area (MCA), which spans the 214,696-hectare Managalas Plateau in Papua New Guinea’s (PNG)’s Oro Province. Far from an uninhabited wilderness, it’s populated by over 22,000 people—most of whom draw the bulk of their sustenance and livelihoods from the landscape.
Original Article: PNG - Can we protect old trees by planting new ones?
