Papua New Guinea (PNG) has an incredible variety of land and marine ecosystems, including many components of biodiversity that are unique in the world. PNG's land mass constitutes less than one percent of the world's land area, yet estimates suggest that the country has more than 5% of the world's biodiversity. PNG has been recognized therefore as an important region for biodiversity conservation (see Alcorn 1993; Beehler 1993 and references within). Recently, Conservation International (CI) has recognized PNG as one of the small number of critical tropical forest areas for conservation efforts. That priority reflects not just PNG's unique biodiversity but also the fact that sustainable use of PNG's natural resources has become an important issue, particularly relating to its large mineral deposits, oil and natural gas reserves, agricultural potential, and forestry production potential. CI's perspective highlights important principles of conservation priority. PNG, like the other tropical wilderness areas on its priority list, is regarded as an opportunity for effective conservation at relatively low cost, given that these wilderness regions are still largely intact and have low human population density. In our view, realizing such opportunities requires good planning. Biodiversity conservation in PNG can imply low realized opportunity costs or quite high realized opportunity costs, depending on whether biodiversity planning is used to find a balance among society's competing needs through tradeoffs. PNG is a region worthy of urgent conservation planning attention because potential high net benefits for society may be needlessly foreclosed through inefficient planning that does not address conflicts among various needs of society. The risk of losing those potential net benefits is a strong argument for conservation investment in PNG.
