Tree Seedings at the Kagamuga Tree Nursery (owned by the National Forest Service) in Mt. Hagen. KVEDO Inc has received over 100,000 tree seedlings.

The overall aim of the proposed project is to build a new tree nursery facility inside Kokop Village in Western Highlands Province. Over the last 6 years, my then CBO (now NGO) bought more than 80,000 tree seedlings from the government-owned Kagamuga Tree Nursery in Mt. Hagen and distributed it freely to thousands of rural villagers for purposes of reforestation. However, due to many difficulties experienced in getting the tree seedling orders apart from other related logistical difficulties, my NGO has now decided to build its own tree nursery. Having a tree nursery of its own would enable KVEDO Inc to:

(1) increase production

(2) control quality

(3) manage efficiency in production of large quantities of locally-demanded seedlings

(4) and decrease all difficulties associated with production and distribution of tree seedlings to the target population.

For these reasons, KVEDO Inc applied for the second time this year (2006) to RSG and was successfully awarded GBP5,000 to develop a new tree nursery facility to complement KVEDO Inc’s on-going reforestation program.

The tree nursery facility, upon completion, would have the capacity to produce a total of 200,000 seedlings annually for KVEDO Inc to distribute freely to the 500,000 people of Western Highlands Province and the 1.2 million people of the highlands region of Papua New Guinea over the next 20 years (2007 – 2027). Some of the reforested sites would become nature conservation areas for the thriving of biodiversity while rest of the reforested sites would be allocated for sustainable logging and downstream processing of timber to meet the social and economic needs for the local population.

Every year over the 20 year period, the tree nursery facility would increase production (i.e., output) while expanding its number of project sites. At the end of the 20-year period of consistent annual reforestation, about 40 to 100 million tree seedlings would have been planted for commercial harvest. Potentially, the 20 provinces of Papua New Guinea can replicate the reforestation model of my NGO and conduct large-scale reforestation in their respective provinces. This reality can create a colossal economic boom, rather a multi-million dollar timber industry in Papua New Guinea. Such reality (of course, in the future) will have grown out of my simple concept or vision. This is therefore the substantial and long lasting contribution to nature conservation and also the improvement in the quality of the people’s lives.