Hunting for Conservation in the Papua New Guinea Highlands

The animals of the Papua New Guinea highlands are relatively defenceless. People not only value their meat, hunters sharing catch with kin, but also formally transact several creatures in the all-important socio-political exchanges that characterise their social life. The local sedentary population is dense, yet it has not hunted species to extinction regardless of their value and vulnerability to predation. This paper seeks an answer in the context of socio-political exchange values that inform social status. It uses data from a survey of animal skull trophies displayed in a sample of houses in the Was valley of the Southern Highlands Province to investigate connections between hunting and social standing - exchange status, kin group affiliation and age - with a view to elucidating tacit conservation behaviour which agencies concerned to protect biodiversity might profitably consider given current participatory rhetoric.