Kokop tree nursery project – an initiative of KVEDO Inc to grow seedlings and distribute them freely to villages for reforestation purposes.

The pilot project involves two components: reforestation and rainforest conservation. Reforestation involves the purchase of 100, 000 tree seedlings from the local tree nurseries and distributing them among over 20, 000 rural village people who each would plant their share of seedlings in their respective customary-owned lands. Upon maturity of these trees, the rural villagers would respectively cultivate them to:

(1) build low-cost permanent houses,

(2) sell the timber in the local markets to generate income,

(3) use the timber for other social, economic, and traditional purposes. This would, in the long term, help increase the villagers’ standard of living.

The rainforest conservation component involves the conservation of Kokop Wopkola Rainforest patch inside Kokop Village. This rainforest patch has over the decades remained the pivotal spiritual, tribal, and traditional hub of the native Kentiga Tribe, one of the 40 native tribes in the province. The now 50-hectare rainforest is owned and managed by KVEDO to conserve all the rich native biodiversity. Under this project, a local court order was taken by KVEDO to prevent the hunting of animals, killing of birds, removal of plants, destruction of the natural habitat, and pollution of the river systems and waterways.

The rainforest habitat would be developed into a nationally recognized Nature Conservation Area (NCA) in order to practically teach rural villagers to practice conservation in their different communities and tribes throughout the province and country. Also, by developing the conservation area and making it a tourism attraction would economically benefit the local Kentiga Tribe’s people through the influx of tourism dollars in the niche’ market: eco-tourism. The pilot project’s off-shoot outcome is the promotion and development of eco-tourism; a third component of this project.

The pilot project will take duration of one full year and is managed by KVEDO under the leadership of Samson Komati Yuimb. The project is aimed at generally and openly promoting, advocating, and encouraging eco-forestry (reforestation), nature conservation (rainforest conservation), and tourism (eco-tourism) developments in rural village communities throughout Western Highlands Province and Papua New Guinea. The main objective of the project is to help improve the standard of living among the poverty-stricken rural villagers throughout the province. Should the pilot project work effectively, plans for replication province and nationwide are already in place and KVEDO is willing to work with all stakeholders to make this project a reality.