Deer Management and Economic Development in Southern New Guinea

Abstract

A wild, introduced population of Rusa deer (Cervus timorensis) inhabits most of the suitable lowland habitat in both the Merauke district in the southeastern portion of the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya and much of the southwest of neighboring Papua New Guinea. The total population size is of the order of 500 000. Perhaps 60% occur in the Indonesian portion of their range. Both the social/economic conditions and the strategy for deer management which currently exists in the two neighboring sovereign states are very different. In Papua New Guinea a system of social control of exploitation of wildlife is based on the concept that the subsistence people most closely associated with the habitat benefit from approved forms of utilization. This system has resulted in the preservation of a large wild deer resource.