YUS Conservation Area: Protecting PNG's Cloud-Forested Tree Kangaroo Range

The Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program, a partnership between Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo and PNG communities that began as a research study in 1996, helped 35 villages in the Huon Peninsula's Finisterre and Saruwaged mountains pledge their land toward the YUS Conservation Area, gazetted by the PNG government in 2009 as the country's first conservation area. YUS protects roughly 78,000 hectares of cloud forest rising from coral reefs to 4,000-metre peaks, providing habitat for the endangered Matschie's tree kangaroo along with 268 bird, 44 mammal and 26 frog species. A locally recruited ranger team patrols and monitors the forest, and the program funds village health workers, teacher scholarships and farming workshops so communities benefit directly from keeping the mountain forest standing; the effort won the UN Equator Prize in 2014.