New Guinea

By Rhett A. Butler [Last update August 8, 2020]

New Guinea, the second largest island in the world, is home to one of the last great expanses of tropical rainforest as well as some of the world's most traditional forest dwellers, some of whom have had little or no contact with the outside world (as of 2010, 44 groups in Indonesian Papua are estimated remain uncontacted). The island is also rich with natural resources including timber, minerals, and offshore fisheries and energy deposits.

Today New Guinea is divided into two parts: the independent country of Papua New Guinea (eastern half), and the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua (the western half formerly known as Irian Jaya).

Papua New Guinea has seen more widespread "development" than the Indonesian part of the island, although the average citizen remains poor. Most Papuans are part of the informal economy, living off subsistent activities. The dominant industries are extraction-based (logging, mining, and increasingly, industrial agriculture).

Quick Facts on New Guinea

• Population: 7.1 million
• First human habitation: 40,000-60,000 years before present
• Languages: 1073 (826 PNG, 257 Indonesian Papua, 12 overlapping)
• European colonization: First contact came in the 16th century; first European claim was in 1828 when the Netherlands claimed the western half of the island as Netherlands New Guinea; Germany and Britain established claims shortly thereafter. For the first half of the 20th century Australia and the Dutch ruled the two halves of New Guinea.
• Indonesian Colonization/Independence: The Dutch handed Papua over to the U.N. in 1962, Indonesia took the territory in 1963. Australia granted independence to the half it controlled in 1975.
• Land area: 786,000 sq km (303,500 sq mi)
• Length: more than 1600 km
• Highest point: Puncak Jaya (4,884 meters - 16,023 feet) in Papua
• Biomes/ecosystems: glacial (permanent equatorial glaciers), alpine tundra, savanna, montane and lowland rainforest, mangroves, wetlands, lake and river ecosystems, seagrasses, and coral reefs
• Biodiversity: Despite covering less than 0.5 percent of Earth's surface, New Guinea is estimated to contain 5-10 percent of global biodiversity. New Guinea's species are characteristic of Australia rather than Asia due to its historical links to the Australian land mass (when sea levels fall, New Guinea is connected to Australia).

Forest cover in New Guinea

According to Hansen / WRI 2020, the Indonesia-controlled part of New Guinea accounts for about 54% of the island's primary forest and about 51% of the island's total tree cover. If the adjacent islands of Bougainville, East New Britain, Manus, New Ireland, and West New Britain are included as part of New Guinea, then the Indonesian share falls to 50.5% and 48%, respectively.

Environmental issues in New Guinea

New Guinea's rainforests are being logged, cleared, and converted at a rapid rate due to timber extraction, subsistence agriculture, and expansion of industrial agriculture. Between 1972 and 2002 PNG lost more than 5 million hectares of forest, trailing only Brazil and Indonesia among tropical countries.

Since 2002, the island as a whole last 1.15 million ha of primary forest, representing 1.9 percent of its extent in that year. PNG accounted for 53% of overall tree cover loss between 2002 and 2019.

In both PNG and Indonesian Papua, deforestation typically begins with selective logging operations. Once valuable timber is extracted from an area, the forest tract is more likely to be coverted for industrial plantations.

Water pollution from mining is also a concern in New Guinea.

Plant diversity in New Guinea

According to Middleton et al 2019, the Indonesian portion of New Guinea and the Maluku Islands have 9,518 species of vascular plants, of which 4,380 -- or 46% -- are endemic. 465 "new" species of plants were described between 2011 and 2017.

New Guinea itself is estimated to have 13,634 plant species, more than any other island. Papua New Guinea has 10,973 described species, while Indonesian New Guinea (Papua Barat and Papua provinces) has 7,616.

More images at the New Guinea slideshow

THE LATEST NEW GUINEA RAINFOREST NEWS

Malaysian companies dominate PNG forest-clearance permits: report (15 Dec 2025 05:54:08 +0000)
- A recent report examining land-conversion permits issued by the Papua New Guinea government found that 65 of 67 such licenses are controlled by Malaysian-linked companies.
- The stated purpose of these permits — Forest Clearing Authorities (FCAs) — is for creation of sustainable jobs via agribusiness and other development projects, but critics contend the licenses have been used to facilitate large-scale logging and timber exports.
- After repeated allegations of misuse of the permits, PNG’s government imposed a moratorium on new FCAs in 2023, but exports continue from existing projects.
- The 65 licenses examined by the report cover 1.68 million hectares (4.1 million acres) of rainforests, about 88% of which are categorized as ‘undisturbed forest.’

In New Guinea, megadiverse lowland forests are most at risk of deforestation (21 May 2025 08:43:29 +0000)
- Located at the edge of the western Pacific Ocean, New Guinea is a vast island where the biota of Asia and Australasia meet, making it a melting pot of unique plants and animals that occur nowhere else on the planet.
- Development pressure is ramping up across the island, however, opening up landscapes to new roads, industrial logging and agricultural conglomerates pushing biofuel agendas.
- New Guinea’s low-elevation forests, which represent some of the world’s last vestiges of ancient lowland tropical rainforest, are particularly imperiled, according to a new study.
- To avert tragedy, the authors urge policymakers to improve land-use planning systems, focus on retaining intact forest landscapes, and strengthen the rights of the people who live among them.

PNG’s Torricelli Mountains teem with life — and the risk of extinction (31 Mar 2025 18:13:43 +0000)
- The Torricelli Mountain range in northern Papua New Guinea holds a staggering amount of biodiversity in a tiny area.
- A recent analysis suggests that the threat of extinction to species living in the Torricellis if the land were cleared of its forests would be among the highest on Earth.
- A community conservation group called the Tenkile Conservation Alliance has worked to end the hunting of critically endangered tree kangaroos in the Torricellis and has proposed a 1,250-square-kilometer (483-square-mile) protected area to further protect the mountains’ forests and species.
- But the government of Papua New Guinea has stopped short of officially recognizing the conservation area as the threat from industrial logging companies in the region remains.

Conservationists welcome new PNG Protected Areas Act — but questions remain (12 Apr 2024 16:08:07 +0000)
- In February 2024, Papua New Guinea’s parliament passed the Protected Areas Bill, first introduced two decades ago, into an act, which aims to establish a national system of protected areas to achieve the conservation target of protecting 30% of PNG’s territory by 2030.
- The act lays out a legal framework for working with customary landowners in the country to earmark protected areas, establishes regulations to manage these areas and provides provisions for alternative livelihoods to forest-dependent communities.
- The act also mandates the establishment of a long-term Biodiversity and Climate Task Fund, which communities can access to implement their management plans and conservation objectives.
- While conservationists say the act is a good step toward protecting biodiversity, they raise concerns about its implementation and whether the promised benefits of protected areas will reach landowning communities.

Unseen and unregulated: ‘Ghost’ roads carve up Asia-Pacific tropical forests (11 Apr 2024 08:34:58 +0000)
- A new study indicates that significant networks of informal, unmapped and unregulated roads sprawl into forest-rich regions of Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
- Slipping beneath the purview of environmental governance, construction of these “ghost roads” typically precede sharp spikes in deforestation and represent blind spots in zoning and law enforcement, the study says.
- The authors underscore that the relentless proliferation of ghost roads ranks among the gravest of threats facing the world’s remaining tropical forests.
- The findings bolster a growing momentum toward the development of AI-based road-mapping systems to help conservation biologists and resource managers better keep track of informal and illegal road networks and curb associated deforestation rates.

In PNG, researchers record 9 new species of predatory hermaphroditic land snails (24 Jan 2024 20:14:12 +0000)
- A new study describes nine new species of land snails lurking in leaf litter across PNG. The discovery results from an extensive countrywide survey undertaken after a gap of 60 years.
- The newly identified snails, all grouped under the genus Torresiropa, are predatory hermaphrodites and about the size of a fingernail. They are restricted to single islands or mountain ranges.
- The discovery adds to the little-known biodiversity of mollusks in the country, and scientists expect to find many more new species in the future.
- As logging, road construction and other human activities threaten the rainforests of PNG, experts warn that human-mediated activities could drive many land snail species to extinction before they are even known to science.

Logging, road construction continue to fuel forest loss in Papua New Guinea (30 Nov 2023 23:15:25 +0000)
- Papua New Guinea boasts the third largest rainforest in the world and houses about 7% of the planet’s biodiversity, including threatened species found nowhere else in the world.
- In recent years, fraudulent practices in the logging and agriculture industry have resulted in massive forest loss across the country while road network expansion plans threaten to further fragment forests and open them up for resource exploitation.
- Satellite data and imagery show logging activity on the rise in PNG, particularly in the province of Oro.
- Conservationists and officials say forest laws must be tightened in PNG and local communities included in decision-making to reduce forest loss, while incentivizing communities to conserve the remaining forests.

Collaboration key to rediscovery of egg-laying mammal in Papua’s Cyclops Mountains (28 Nov 2023 14:43:57 +0000)
- Collaboration between international and local researchers, conservation authorities, NGOs and Indigenous groups was key to the success of an expedition in Indonesia’s Cyclops Mountains that uncovered new sightings of a rare egg-laying mammal and multiple unidentified species.
- “I think the trust between the expedition team and the community was important in the success of the expedition, and a lack of trust may have contributed to former searches being less successful,” said University of Oxford researcher James Kempton who proposed the expedition in 2019.
- The highlight of the expedition was camera-trap images of Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna, distantly related to the platypus, which scientists hadn’t seen since 1961 and which they’d long feared was extinct.
- The expedition also found the Mayr’s honeyeater, a bird scientists haven’t seen since 2008; an entirely new genus of tree-dwelling shrimp; countless new species of insects; and a previously unknown cave system.

Report: Forest-razing biomass plant in Indonesia got millions in green funds (02 Jun 2023 01:14:13 +0000)
- An Indonesian oil and gas company is using government money to clear rainforest for a biomass power plant, according to a new report.
- The project has received a total of $9.4 million from two Ministry of Finance agencies, including one tasked with managing environmental protection funds from international donors.
- Criticism of Medco’s activities reflects a broader debate over whether clear-cutting rainforest can ever be considered sustainable, even when done in the name of transitioning a major coal-producing country away from fossil fuels.

Gold miner faces global protests as it rekindles a mine with a violent legacy (01 May 2023 20:01:46 +0000)
- Three years after the Papua New Guinea government refused to renew its license, the Porgera gold mine is now on track to reopen.
- The mine will relaunch under joint ownership of the government and mine operator Barrick Gold.
- Activists in PNG have joined global protests against Barrick, saying the new agreement does not address a legacy of violence and environmental damage, and drawing parallels between Porgera and Barrick’s mines in Tanzania and Pakistan.

Logging threats loom over tree kangaroo refuge in Papua New Guinea (25 Jan 2023 16:30:14 +0000)
- Logging is threatening the Torricelli Mountains, a biodiversity-rich forested range in Papua New Guinea known for its tree kangaroos and other threatened species of birds and mammals.
- Community conservation efforts have helped to increase the numbers of tree kangaroos, once nearly pushed to extinction by hunting and logging, in conjunction with development projects for the people of the Torricellis.
- The Tenkile Conservation Alliance, a Papua New Guinean NGO, has led an effort to protect the area, but the government has yet to officially designate what would be the Torricelli Mountain Range Conservation Area.
- Satellite imagery shows the loss of forest and an increase in roadbuilding over the past two years. And residents of the Torricellis say that representatives of logging companies have been trying to secure permission to log the region’s forests.

Who owns the companies destroying rainforests in the heart of New Guinea? (13 Apr 2022 15:26:31 +0000)
- New Guinea, home to the world’s third-largest rainforest, also contains the world’s largest planned oil palm plantation.
- Covering 2,800 square kilometers (1,100 square miles) the Tanah Merah project is nearly the size of the U.S. state of Rhode Island.
- However, the true owners of the seven concessions that make up the project remain hidden through a shroud of corporate secrecy.
- We speak with Philip Jacobson, senior editor at Mongabay, and Bonnie Sumner, investigative reporter at the Aotearoa New Zealand organization Newsroom, to discuss the project from inception to present day, the involvement of a New Zealand businessman, and where the project could go next.

Tree kangaroos may be key to New Guinea forest conservation (16 Mar 2022 17:11:24 +0000)
- New Guinea is home to 12 of 14 species of the elusive, charismatic tree kangaroo.
- Conservationists in Papua New Guinea have been fighting for decades to establish protected areas using these species as a flagship species for these conservation efforts. PNG is now on the cusp of passing legislation aimed at creating a network of them.
- The Torricelli mountain range in northern PNG, home to the critically endangered tenkile tree kangaroo, has been in the crosshairs of a road project threatening to encroach upon the region, but the government is in the process of reviewing a draft proposal to halt the road for now.
- We speak with Jim Thomas of the Tenkile Conservation Alliance and Lisa Dabek and Modi Pontio of the Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program for this episode to explore what's known about these intelligent marsupials, and the successes from nearly two decades working in PNG to conserve both them and the forests they inhabit.

Palm oil firm hit by mass permit revocation still clearing forest in Indonesia (22 Feb 2022 09:35:46 +0000)
- An Indonesian palm oil company stripped of its permit at the start of the year has since been actively clearing forest in its concession.
- PT Permata Nusa Mandiri was among 137 palm oil firms whose permits were revoked by the environment ministry on Jan. 6, but went on to bulldoze more than 50 hectares of rainforest since then.
- Environmental activists and local Indigenous communities have long opposed the company’s presence in Papua province, but the questionable legality of the government’s permit revocations means the firm could still be allowed to continue operating.
- The land clearance is taking place in the Jalan Korea area, a popular birdwatching and tourism destination.

Protecting New Guinea’s forests with birds-of-paradise and ecotourism (16 Feb 2022 18:11:49 +0000)
- The island of New Guinea is home to 44 species of unique birds-of-paradise that are found nowhere else on Earth.
- The EcoNusa Foundation in Indonesia and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have partnered on a campaign called “defending paradise,” using the birds as ambassadors for the island’s biodiversity and communities.
- Home to the third-largest tract of tropical rainforest in the world, of which 80% is still intact, New Guinea is in a unique position to conserve its forest cover as part of an economy that serves its local inhabitants, rather than extracting from and deforesting these communities.
- For this episode of Mongabay Explores, we interview Bustar Maitar, founder and CEO of the EcoNusa Foundation, and Edwin Scholes, head of the Birds-of-Paradise Project at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.