Rainforests at Mt. Wilhelm, as with elsewhere in PNG, are owned by indigenous landowners. The summit area of Mt. Wilhelm above 3200 m asl. has been declared a National Park and is one of the top PNG tourist destinations.

However, majority of rainforest diversity is concentrated outside of the National Park and remains unprotected. Several local communities wanted to conserve rainforests on some of their lands, creating thus a transect comprising all types of rainforest ecosystems from lowland to alpine.

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New Guinea Binatang Research Centre is working with rainforest owners to establish a Conservation Area at Mt Wilhelm that could become an internationally important site for ecological research.

BRC and the local communities have established a research transect comprising eight study sites at 500 m elevation increments, spanning from 200 to 3700 m asl. This transect, one of the few in that tropics that encompass complete rainforest elevation range, is now open for research. So far we have marked the boundaries of almost 20,000ha of protected area and are in the process of progressing the project to a fully committed research and conservation area, known as the Mt Wilhelm Conservation Area (MWCA).

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The Complete Altitudinal Rainforest Transect or CART within the Mt Wilhelm Conservation Area offers unprecedented insight into the effects of climate change, making it a popular contemporary research target. Historically elevation gradients have acted as important ‘natural experimental sites’, leading to major ecological theories including community assembly, niche theory, and insular biogeography. Environmental conditions change with elevation while regional species pools remain fixed. We can thus relate ecosystem and species changes to the environment, rather than evolutionary history. This is fundamental to our understanding of how species are responding to climate change. While the Mt Wilhelm altitudinal transect has already borne many high-quality publications, it remains understudied compared with other tropical mountains such as Mt Kinabalu or Mt Cameroon. The MWCA CART is the only of its kind east of the Wallace Line and represents a wealth of untapped knowledge. Understanding the response of the natural world to climate change is the first fundamental step that must be taken to develop climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.

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Mt. Wilhelm communities and BRC welcome all visitors including tourists and researchers. We have logistics in place for your transport and accommodation and trained staff to look after you when you are enjoying your rainforest adventures.