The leaders had been waiting for this moment for decades. On June 30, on a hilltop in northwestern Papua New Guinea, 266 clan leaders from 41 villages gathered to put their names on a piece of paper that could change everything for the forests and the rare animals that call them home. With their signatures, they created a legally binding conservation deed protecting more than 125,000 hectares of rainforest in the Torricelli Mountains.
The deed bans commercial logging and mining across the range and stops hunting of threatened species. It renews every five years, giving the agreement staying power long into the future.
"We have been waiting for so long," said Caleb Bulu, a project manager with the Tenkile Conservation Alliance, the group that spent decades working toward this moment. Bulu has fought to keep loggers off his own land in the region.
The Torricelli Mountains are small, but their importance to wildlife is enormous. Scientists estimate the range holds about 4 percent of the world's biodiversity in a relatively tiny patch of intact mountain rainforest. Two critically endangered tree kangaroo species live there: the tenkile and the weimang. These animals were first described for Western science in the 1990s, and their discoverers worried their numbers were already so low they might disappear forever.
But the tide has turned. Thanks to years of work by local communities and the Tenkile Conservation Alliance, tenkile numbers have tripled since the 2000s. Both the tenkile and weimang have expanded into parts of the forest where they hadn't been seen in decades.
The conservation alliance was started by Jim and Jean Thomas, a pair of zookeepers from Australia who moved to the Torricellis in 2003. They worked with local people to end the hunting of tree kangaroos and launched ranger programs for men and women across the region. The group also helped bring clean water, metal roofs, and solar-powered lights to remote villages.
For years, the alliance tried to win official government protection for the mountains. But those efforts kept stalling. So instead, leaders turned to a relatively new tool: the conservation deed. It took two years of careful conversations with communities to build the agreement through a process that gave everyone a chance to learn about it and weigh in before signing. The deed has real legal teeth. In 2025, a Papua New Guinea National Court cited a similar deed to restrict logging on clan lands, showing these agreements can hold up in court.
Now, with the deed signed and celebrated with dancing and singing at TCA's base in the village of Lumi, the alliance plans to take this model to nearby areas facing the same threats from logging and mining.
"We've looked at the history, and we've decided, OK, well, we'll do that as an alternative — something else to do — to protect the land," said Jim Thomas, now TCA's chief executive. The group still hopes to eventually win official government protection for the area, but for now, the deed offers a path forward that communities can believe in.