In mid-May, a bulldozer began clearing a logging road into an area of largely untouched rainforest near the village of Suburam, on Papua New Guinea’s north coast, between the mountains of the Adelbert Range and the Bismarck Sea.
Towering kwila trees were among those locals say were felled by loggers. This is a coveted, high-value species that yields the rich red timber familiar in Australia as merbau.
Landowners in the area say these trees are historically never cut down by them. They are considered ancestors, and the local Tivia clan say they only use the hardwood when the trees are “given”, falling naturally. Tivia means “blood”, Lawrance Omben, a clan leader from Arenduk village explains: “Blood because it is red – the tree sap is red.”
Locals say the bulldozer felled 18 kwila and 100 mixed hardwoods.
They say the bulldozer also levelled a sacred area – a matmat, the burial site for five generations of chiefs from three clans, surrounded by tall kwila that were the daughters of the clan’s mother tree.