PREAMBLE

EARLY SILVICULTURE, FORESTRY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN PNG UP TO INDEPENDANCE in 1975 by Neville H.S. Howcroft OBE. Preamble

This document has been drafted over and over several times.

It is based on documented information, copies of such that I have salvaged over time, exchange of memory aids between myself and colleagues, both expatriate and indigenous who have served with me in the time covered here and since, with regret some of whom have passed on. For all that, it is also a personal narrative and information. Unfortunately, I lost the one I liked the best drafted on my computer, of what was considered the final version.

Panic now! Time is the enemy here now, the story must be completed, the story must be told, truth is essential for accuracy, nothing must be missed. The feeling was like that I would expect of a person who has been left high and dry by a receding of the sea caused by a tectonic up lift. You know by anecdotal accounts that it’s going to reverse (but when, and how fast?), don’t stop, run like mad for high ground and hope to hell that you leave nothing and no one behind!!! I hope I have not left anything behind, because not only was this an important period for me but equally so in the history of Papua New Guinea’s development. The year 1975 was an important time of change and development, for what is now known as the Papua New Guinea Forest Authority. Te following account of my Papua New Guinea experience was meant to cut off at Independence in 1975. I deliberately overlapped to demonstrate that past 1975 there has been continued evolution of development in PNG Forestry.

Neville Howcroft OBE 2022.