Case Study on Outsider Impacts by Exploration, Mining, Science and western NGOs: An Honest Look at ‘Crater Mountain’ in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Crater Mountain Crater Mountain is a world-famous research site near Goroka Goroka in the highlands Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG). It served as international conservation inspiration and as a study site for many studies, thesis and PhD dissertations—local and from abroad. Anthropologists, photographers and naturalists alike visited in order to study in remote tropical virtually untouched wilderness areas surrounded by ‘ancient tribes.’ Birds of Paradise got intensely collected and pursued, Cassowaries and many other aspects got studied with year-long efforts and supported by NGO Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) efforts. This image of perceived harmony changed dramatically though when mining exploration got announced and started to unfold on the landscape and its social fabric. Subsequent tribal Tribal conflict and other conflicts became intense and violent, people got injured, resulting into a departure of NGOs Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and researchers making this ‘conservation’ area a bad showcase how external forces shape and affect outcome in an ‘original’ setting initially little touched by the western world, apart from Australian mining efforts, colonialism and their missions 100 years ago. While many people in the bush are worse off, just like the cassowaries and Bird of Paradise, Crater Mountain Crater Mountain presents a small conservation area but a wider and horrific example for the realities of western conservation and research efforts operating in the PNG fabric all created by, and with, a western oversight. This was more complicated than western people had initially thought, and Crater Mountain is now a major proposed mining place waiting for a wide and deep landscape modification to come.