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  • WHERE I WORK

Tapping local knowledge to save a Papua New Guinea forest

Villagers who know the land help Jason Paliau to survey the region’s insects.
  1. Chris Woolston

    1. Chris Woolston is a freelance writer in Billings, Montana.

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Jason Paliau and local assistant Sammy collect ant specimens in a rainforest in Papua New Guinea

Jason Paliau is a lecturer at the Papua New Guinea University of Resources and Environment in Rabaul. Credit: UN-REDD Programme

It takes collaboration to get the full picture of a forest. Here, I’m teaming up with Sammy, a local senior-school student, to count and identify ants in a dense fragment of lowland rainforest. It’s November 2019, when I was a research technician with the New Guinea Binatang Research Centre in Madang, and we’re near the village of Boredoa on the southern coast of Papua New Guinea.

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Nature 594, 466 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01587-7

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