Jean Thomas

Tenkile Conservation Alliance – Conservation Education Program

Tenkile (Photo taken by Matt Vincent).

LocationCountryCategoriesDate
Torricelli Mountains Papua New GuineaAustralasia, Education, Mammals9 Jun 2005

The Tenkile Conservation Alliance (TCA) a non-government organization was established in Papua New Guinea in 2001. Its primary goal is to save the critically endangered Scott’s Tree Kangaroo (Dendrolagus scottae) or Tenkile from extinction. Restricted to approximately 40 square kilometers of the Torricelli Mountains, Sandaun Province the Tenkile occurs on land entirely owned by 18 villages. Hunting is considered one of the primary threats to the Tenkile whose population is estimated at only 100 animals. These factors make it imperative that any conservation effort engages local communities. Since 2003, the TCA has been conducting conservation education programs, providing alternative protein sources to villages and conducting research in the Torricelli Mountains to monitor the animal populations.

The Rufford Small Grant has provided funding for TCA’s conservation education program. The aim of this project is to support conservation of Tenkile, through development and delivery of conservation education programs within the Torricelli Mountains. The program aims to enable local people to make informed choices on how to use their natural resources, through:

  • Raising awareness of the significance of their environment in both a local and global context,
  • Providing practical solutions that address local conservation issues and,
  • Empowering and motivating them to act on conservation issues
Project Update: September 2005

During September, 27 teachers from 16 of the local schools attended a week long teacher training workshop. TCA’s Education Officer Mrs Jean Thomas wrote a training manual based on the PNG science and social science curriculum. The manual is designed as a resource that can help teachers with lesson plans, activities and background information on science and conservation. The content of the manual contains many local examples of animals including the critically endangered Scott’s Tree Kangaroo or Tenkile as it is known in the local language.

Most teachers found the training workshop interesting and have learned a lot.

Mr Ainui Robin

“The nature of living things was an excellent unit of work that really helped me to know the importance of nature because many times I use to say that nature is ‘something nothing’ but the truth is that nature plays an important role in life”

Mr Mathew Makari

“I now realize that PNG is a very unique nation because it has a lot of plants and animals that are not found in other parts of the world. I also learned that humans have had and will have greater impact on the environment and I have to assist one way or another to disseminate information regarding ways and strategies to conserve our most fragile species in the environment.”

Project Update: April 2006

Jean at Yomoum drama.

We have completed all of the components of the conservation education program for the Tenkile Conservation Alliance. Since our last update in August, we have focused our education program on conducting village drama based education programs and puppet shows. We have conducted drama education programs in 15 villages since 2004. The drama education program provides village representatives with an insight into local conservation issues and an opportunity to show their communities how they would deal with contraversial issues such as logging and breaking the hunting moratorium for Tenkile. Participants also developed and performed songs about conservation which were recorded by TCA and now feature in a weekly radio program.

The TCA radio program has been on air since the re-opening of the local radio staion called Radio Sandaun in December 2005. The TCA radio program includes animal characters such as Timmy Tenkile, Clemen Cockie and Rick the Rat who discuss various conservation topics and the unique fauna of PNG with TCA staff. These animal characters have recently come to "life" in a traveling puppet show conducted at each village during February 2006. During this time, TCA presented each village with a wind-up radio for village representatives to listen to the radio progam each week.

TCA staff and village representatives express their thanks and gratitdude to the people at Rufford Small Grants for their fantastic support.

Without your sponsorship TCA would not have been able to implement its important Conservation Education Program to the people of the Torricelli Mountains. We are confident this education program has helped in the protection of one of the most critically endangered species in the world
- Tenkile.

2nd RSG Grant Awarded

Read about Jean's latest project http://www.rufford.org/rsg/projects/jean_thomas


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