Original subtitles

(birds chirping)

(water rushing)

(drums beating) (tribal chanting)

(somber instrumental music)

- [Jean] A year after Jim and I were married,

we went to Papua New Guinea to attempt what many people

thought would be an impossible task.

We had come here to try and persuade over 10,000 people

to not hunt an endangered animal that had been part

of their staple diet for centuries.

While some people thought we were crazy,

others feared an even darker outcome.

(spiritual singing)

- I don't believe a child is born who doesn't,

within the first few years of his life,

become fascinated by natural world.

He or she is not concerned with, as it were, value.

He is concerned with wonder.

Take a four year old and turn over a stone

and he sees an earwig or a slug and he's amazed

because that thing shares something that you have,

which is life.

But if you actually lose that fascination,

if you actually lose that wonder of the natural world,

you've lost a great treasure.

(birds chirping)

- Discovering the natural world came to me very early.

I was very interested in animals from day dot, really.

When we started going on family holidays to Mount Hotham,

Wilson's Promitory, I started to make the connection

between the animals I kept at home

and the animals in the wild.

And that's when I started really thinking

about conservation, I think.

About animals belonging and being part of the web of life.

- [Jean] Jim and I met at Melbourne Zoo.

We were both keepers at the time

and studying science at university.

- We were working together on the native mammal department,

so with wombats, kangaroos, koalas.

I just thought, oh no, she's really nice

and I actually noticed Jane being nice

when we were working together.

And I remember having a very deep and meaningful

conversation with Jim.

We'd really want it to do more and I thought,

hey, you know, we're connecting here

because we have the same values and really liked

the idea of doing something for the planet.

- I've been involved in conservation for a number of years,

working with recovery programs.

And I always got frustrated.

I didn't feel I was making enough of a difference.

Yeah, I just wanted to sink my teeth into something.

Let's see if we can make a difference

in the saving of endangered species.

- This is fairly dense forest.

- Yeah. - Happy, Roger.

- Yeah, oh, it is, yeah.

There's not a lot of--

- Tim Flannery and Roger Martin are two legends of mine.

They wrote a book that changed my life.

- [Man] I think.

- [Man] So, you see any scratches in here, Jim?

- [Jim] They've been studying a special type of kangaroo,

relatively unknown, unstudied.

- And they're very good at using even the smallest bit

of canopy to hide behind. - Yes.

- Well, my experience is that there's

very few of them, Roger.

- [Jim] These kangaroos live in small groups

or are solitary.

Unlike their land-based cousins,

they possess a unique quality

that is different from all other kangaroos.

These kangaroos live in trees.

- [Man] They're such weirdly anomalous creatures.

You know, we're all used to kangaroos on the ground,

but the idea that a clumsy, hopping animal like that

might inhabit the tree tops of a rainforest

seems so unlikely.

- [Jim] In the early days, Tim and Roger's passion

for tree kangaroos inspired me as a young man.

Their enthusiasm's contagious and sitting here

with them now, around the campfire,

still really fires me up.

Back in the '90s, Tim headed off on a quest

to find new animal species.

He headed overseas, just North of Australia,

to the tropical rainforests of Papua New Guinea.

(somber instrumental music)

For animal scientists,

Papua New Guinea was still a new frontier.

Tim worked there for a number of years,

finding and describing new species of mammals,

unknown to science never seen before.

Just found in a small area,

but his biggest bond was a new spaces of kangaroo,

the black tree kangaroo, a very special species

and the locals called it Tenkile.

- [Man] This almost certainly would have died

if it had stayed down.

- It's good though, that he's eating so well.

Oh wow, that's just wonderful.

(somber instrumental music)

- [Jim] There's lots of different kinds of tree kangaroos,

15 different species, but the Tenkile is really unique.

It's this big, boofy, muscular tree kangaroo.

It's almost taken the same evolutionary path

as the gorilla and eats lots of fruits and leaves

and gets it to be a big animal.

So when Tim and Roger's book was released,

I got it straight away and I read it cover to cover,

about four or five times, within a week.

Such beautiful creatures, but for some of them,

only a little time left.

(tribal music)

(speaking in foreign language)

The Tenkile Conservation Alliance,

commonly known now as TCA, was established in 1999

to bring an end to the hunting of the Tenkile.

Two Australian guys, Peter Clark and Gary Slater,

established a contract for the villages to sign

so that they wouldn't hunt the tree kangaroos.

(somber instrumental music)

(birds chirping)

So, I kept pushing and pushing to get over to TCA

and help save these animals.

Send me to PNG, I'm your man, send me,

I want to go, I want to do it.

- [Jean] When Jim came home to say,

do you want to go to Papua New Guinea,

it wasn't like I just jumped at it and said, yes.

I seriously considered it, but at the same time,

was quite torn about which way to go, you know,

because we'd literally just got ourselves into a mortgage

and we were only just married less than a year.

Leaving the suburbs to go to the third largest

tropical rainforest in the world, that's a huge decision.

We would have to go and live in the remote jungles

of Papua New Guinea for at least two years.

It is home to some of the richest natural biodiversity

on the planet.

At the time, we really had no idea that this journey

would end up taking us far beyond

what we could have ever imagined.

Our goal was to save a single species of tree kangaroo.

So who would have thought a small animal on the verge

of extinction could bring new hope

and affect the lives of over 10,000 people

living in one of the most remote places on Earth?

(dramatic instrumental music)

- Hello!

Driving in our new car.

Well, it's a second-hand car, but it looks pretty new.

It's new compared to the shit box combi

I've been driving for the last six years.

(Jean laughs)

And we drove from, we went to Lumi,

not knowing anything about the road.

We knew the conditions of the road weren't too good,

but we thought we had a strong four-wheel drive car.

We were wrong.

It took two days, 48 hours,

to get from Wewak to Lumi.

On that first trip we got bogged at least 15 times.

I haven't done much, if any,

four-wheel driving in Australia, so it was a crash course.

- And I was helping pushing the car as well.

You'd go through the bogs and I'd be at the back pushing,

pushing you along with the locals.

So I was literally covered head to toe in mud.

- I wasn't, that was great.

That was a good part of the story.

(Jean laughs)

Sometimes we're in a bog for four or five hours

and I think that was the longest bog.

- [Jean] I thought, what the hell are we doing?

This is crazy.

It was just bizarre.

Totally bizarre. (laughs)

(languid instrumental music)

- [Jim] It was such a relief, such an achievement

getting up to Lumi.

- [Jean] We were literally cheering and high-fiving

and then we just crashed.

We were just exhausted, covered in mud

and just literally went straight to bed

at seven o'clock that night.

- [Jim] And we didn't care what sort of conditions

we were living.

We knew we had a bush hut,

but it was like aw, anything that just has a roof

over our head and keeps us dry, that's all we want.

(tapping)

- [Jean] The news spread like wildfire

that we had arrived in the area.

(speaking in foreign language)

People were talking about us.

There's a real buzz of activity.

People coming to visit us, tell us what they knew.

We had become very public figures almost overnight.

People brought us all kinds of animals

and it didn't take long

for us to have a bit of a collection.

It was like a mini zoo.

- [Man] Here's a little baby bandy who was brought in.

- [Jean] It fired us up to get out there.

Visit the villages with Tenkile on their land

and convince them to resign the hunting ban.

Many people didn't believe we had any hope of success.

Many of the villages are only accessible by narrow walking

tracks through this incredible jungle.

Most of the villages sit on ridges divided by valleys.

So you're constantly climbing up and down the steep grades

that are made even more treacherous

by being so wet and slippery.

- [Jim] When we first started walking,

we thought aw we'll stay at this village for one night.

I think we stayed there for two or three nights

because we're so unfit and so unused to the humidity.

We had a lot of arguments that first patrol,

because we're just so tired and frustrated.

We didn't know the language.

So that sort of got under our skin a little bit as well.

(people chattering)

The first patrol was a huge icebreaker

because for many people, it was the first time they'd seen

a white person in their village and for many children,

it was the first time they'd ever seen a white person.

(speaking in foreign language)

- Some were really frightened of us and would run away

in tears, but then others were quite curious

and they'd slowly, slowly sneak up to us

and then they'd come along and go like this.

Or you'd feel, or you'd feel someone touch your hair,

just slightly like that and then they'd be like,

it wasn't me.

- Integrating into the community

was very difficult because the people are very,

very short and I'm six 6'1", big white guy with long hair.

So I was very conscious of that

because of pretty much a giant towering over these people,

so I didn't want to intimidate them, but at the same time,

I didn't want to be intimidated myself.

So I found the best approach was just to be relaxed,

listen to what the people say,

even though initially we didn't understand pidgin,

so it was just a lot of nodding of the head and smiling.

But from that, I learned that a smile goes a long way.

Papua New Guinea people are very friendly.

As soon as you smile, it really does break the ice for them

and they feel more relaxed in in talking to you

and opening up to you.

So on that first patrol, we had a lot of challenges,

a lot of cultural differences that are in our face

for the first time ever.

A lot of people asking for things,

things that we couldn't deliver a new road,

a vehicle, new house and we had to get used to saying, no.

We had to actually practice saying no.

- [Jean] We had to really drop that expectation

and say, look, that's not who we are.

We're not a bank.

We're not a mission.

We're not the government.

We're just two people that care about animals.

- [Jim] But generally, the feeling was we're welcomed here.

We're going to make an impact here.

This wasn't sort of like, oh, this is too hard,

we're going to give up, no.

(speaking in foreign language)

And as we learned pidgin you know,

taking a good three months before we understood

most of it or able to speak a lot of it,

that's when we realized,

okay, we are making a bit of an impact here.

Let's keep the momentum running, get going.

(piano music)

- Going to the villages for the very first time,

our mandate was to introduce ourselves

and let people know why we were there.

So we had a message.

You have this special animal, it's a Tenkile,

that's only found here in your forest.

You own this animal.

If you keep hunting it, it will become extinct.

And the people will tell us, well, this is what we eat.

We got to keep eating.

What are we going to eat if we don't eat the Tenkile?

That's when it hit us where we thought, yeah,

that's a good point. (laughs)

We can't just expect people not to hunt it

because we love it and we think it's cute.

- We're asking people not to hunt a tree kangaroo

that they'd been hunting for tens of thousands of years.

And we went around to all of the villages

and we saw lots of sickness,

lots of kids with dribbly noses,

extended bellies, everyone coughing.

And we just thought, how can we ask people not to eat

one species when everyone here looks pretty sick?

The bigger picture here is to help the people,

to then help them save their own animal.

(dramatic instrumental music)

After the first patrol, we felt we'd achieved a lot.

We certainly shed a lot of kilos.

We'd walked at least 80 kilometers to 18 villages

and had them all resign the hunting moratorium.

So up until now, things had been pretty good,

but we'd realized that there was just so much more to do.

The initiation, the honeymoon was nearly over.

(birds chirping)

(children laughing)

Here at PNG, we're in the middle of nowhere.

People have the basics

and the number of times we've heard people say,

we are still in the stone age,

help us get out of the stone age, is a lot.

And you've got to feel empathy for the people

because they don't have electricity,

they don't have running water,

they don't have transport.

Not all their kids can go to school

because they have to pay for school.

They don't get subsidies.

There's no pensions.

You know, they really are in a hard place.

(somber instrumental music)

(tapping)

(children singing in foreign language)

- [Jean] I was responsible for developing

an education program to teach the people

about the Tenkile and why it was critically endangered

and what they could do about it.

So one of the first programs I did

was to visit school groups.

I designed a three day education program to teach students

about basic science, ecology-based concepts,

things like that.

So food chains and food webs and all the different species

that are found in the Torricelli mountain ranges

that are unique.

(children laughing)

We developed a puppet show because we wanted to really

engage the local communities with what we were doing.

- [Jim] Rick the Rat, he was the snaky character.

He was the devil's advocate.

The one that was always on the bad guy's side.

So he would support the mothers, the minors,

the bad decisions, and then you'd have Clement Cocky

would be the one that didn't really understand

and wanted to hear both points of view.

Then he had Timmy Tenkile, on his last legs,

critically endangered, imploring everyone,

not to kill him and hunt him,

to look after these environment, protect the rainforest.

(soft dramatic music)

(clapping)

- [Jean] Most people in the communities

don't have an education past grade four.

So anything that was written,

probably would be completely useless in that context.

(yelling)

So then I developed a training program that used drama

as a form of education.

It was fantastic because people were looking

at their cultural significance of the Tenkile

and the species in their rainforest.

So they would do a play on the Tenkile itself,

hunting the Tenkile, any kind of traditional stories

that they had, they would perform that in a play.

It showed us that it wasn't just an animal.

You know, it wasn't just food.

It had a lot more value to it

than just eating it, hunting and eating it.

- We learnt a lot about the Tenkile and the people.

Different villages had different ancestral stories.

So woobatey had ancestral story in which they believe

the Tenkile rose out of a sacred lake

with all of these spiritual ells about.

Whereas, wegotee believed that the people

actually evolved from tree kangaroos, from Tenkile.

People came out from the mountains originally,

a long time ago, from Tenkile, they are Tenkile.

- It was quite strange when we were doing the reenactment of

all of the traditional stories,

the audience would be laughing and I'd be like, oh,

people actually think this is funny.

And then it dawned on me.

They're not laughing because the Tenkile is dying.

They're just looking at their uncles and their brothers.

- Dressed in black-- - Dressed in black.

- Someone wack them over the head with a stick.

(singing in foreign language)

(somber instrumental music)

(low chattering)

Protein was one of the main things

that people raised at meetings and at villages.

We need meat.

We're not getting enough.

They used to have lots, now we don't have hardly any.

And we could see that in the people too,

the state of the children, the health of the people.

- [Jean] There are a lot of villages to look after.

There were 18 villages at the time, around 6,000 people

and everyone's hungry and the clock is ticking.

- So we racked our brains, trying to work out a way

to satisfy peoples hunger for meat.

We knew that anything that we did would have to be

fairly cheap, easy to do and sustainable.

We had some funding at that point in time,

and it had been agreed upon to start rabbit farming

for the first protein farming.

And we thought that was a good idea

because it meant the Tenkile is being replaced

by another mammal, being in rabbits.

We started breeding in Lumi.

A lot of people in Australia and other countries

would think rabbits have run feral

and destroyed the landscape, especially in Australia,

but we looked at the science.

There's no native rabbit that lives in the rainforest.

They don't do well there.

It's too wet, it's too humid.

You have to provide an artificial environment

in the rainforest for them to survive.

(tapping)

After that we've got materials,

distributed them to the 18 Tenkile villages,

and then once we got the rabbits breeding,

we then distributed the rabbits to the villages

and started to educate the people

on how to look after them and breed them themselves.

(man speaking in foreign language)

- People were interested and they were curious

about it, but when they actually saw the rabbit

for the first time, they were like--

- What the hell's that?

Why's he got such big ears?

I don't understand.

- [Jean] And then they started to think,

oh, if our children ate it,

maybe our children will grow big ears as well.

- We'll get big ears if we eat this animal.

Oh, don't know about that.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Jean] So we had to obviously, start to educate people

on not just how to look after the rabbits in captivity,

but also that it's not going to do all of these other things

that you think it might do.

(speaking in foreign language)

(thunder cracking)

- It really, it really affected me.

And part of me wanted to keep on going

and let's turn this around, but part of me thought,

well, is it, are we here too late?

Have we come too late?

We were all in shock, not only Jean and myself,

but many others in the communities,

and also our local TCA staff.

A senior project, officer Matthew Agon,

he really took it hard.

He went to the villages to try and sort things out.

(yelling in foreign language)

We had to overcome, well, this project is failing

at the moment.

People are still hunting the animal.

We nearly gave up at that point.

It was very hard.

So here in PNG, people are used to gardening.

They've been gardening more than any other culture

on the planet.

They're used to hunting.

They've been doing that for generations.

And we went around to the villages.

Yeah, we saw lots of chickens running around, a few pigs,

but we didn't see any cages.

There's nothing housed, really.

You know, animal husbandry was a new thing.

So with us starting the rabbits,

that was really the first of people keeping animals in cages

and this a totally new concept for people.

So yeah, of course,

many gave up because it was something new.

But fortunately, not all people gave up.

(speaking in foreign language)

(soothing acoustic music)

We're hoping that with Vincent's success,

others will follow his lead.

Jean and I both agree that this is going to take some time.

It's a really long road.

When you're saving an animal species,

there's a lot of trial and error

and it can take a long time, years in fact,

before you see any results.

(singing in foreign language)

So we'd been in Papua New Guinea for a number of years

without seeing a Tenkile.

We've heard stories, we'd seen scats,

we'd seen bones of animals that had been hunted previously

and it was quite frustrating.

Here we are, trying to save this animal

that we'd never seen.

So coming back to Australia every Christmas

was very frustrating.

What are you doing in PNG?

Oh, what a waste of time, you haven't even seen one.

And it was like, well, you know,

we're not going over there to see it.

We're going there to save it.

But it was a huge relief

when we finally saw our first animal.

Staff of mine had gone out into the mountains on a patrol

and they'd found three and they caught one,

brought it back to Lumi.

We kept this animal, named Suna, for about six weeks.

So seeing the first Tenkile, it was just magnificent.

It's like, oh, this is great.

We studied her, we got lots of photos.

We weighed her, we measured her.

We collected some hair samples, some scat samples.

She was like no other tree kangaroo I'd seen before,

and I'd seen six or seven different species,

but the Tenkile's behavior, just the way about it.

It was very different.

She was very calm.

But Suna just had this look in her eye,

like she knew what was happening, bright red eyes, red eyes,

you know, not many animals have red eyes

and of course the black coat.

And you can basically just pick her up if you wanted to.

And it was so beautiful to see.

And then we put her back into the wild.

But that was, that was huge, seeing that,

because it was only then that we realized

that people had an empathy for the animals.

(chanting and drums beating)

There was huge celebrations at every village we went through

and there was gifts presented to Suna,

as if it was the prime minister or if it was a VIP.

It as incredible.

(joyous singing and guitar music)

That's right, that's right.

(speaking in foreign language)

There's no worry at that point of her being hunted

on this village's land, 'cause they were so proud to have

the animal back there.

This is one village that didn't think that they had

the animal on their land.

- And the pride that came with that

and the cohesiveness in the village,

there were are all these other little aspects

that we noticed from that experience.

It was about the community themselves,

who united more because of that.

(somber instrumental music)

- Finding Tenkile in the wild is extremely difficult.

It's painstaking exercise.

So when technology becomes available that makes it easier

to find the animals, you want it.

So when camera traps became more affordable

and we could get them through grants, we jumped on board.

So little boxes, strapped onto a tree

with a remote sensing trigger.

Animals go past it and viola, we've got photos of all

of the animals that are in the Torricellis.

Hey, that's fantastic.

A great result from the camera traps is that we're also

getting a greater respect for the elderly

in each community because they're able to identify

all of the animals on the camera traps themselves,

where most of the young people have never seen

a lot of the species before.

And this has been fantastic in terms of getting

the communities working better together.

Really, really impressive results.

I'm overwhelmed, I didn't expect to see that.

(sweeping instrumental music)

At one of the drama programs,

a village a few kilometers away,

visiting to try and encourage us to have them

in the project as well.

And they presented us with a live Weimang

or gold mantled tree kangaroo.

When I realize that the Weimang was still in existence,

it wasn't extinct, as Roger Martin thought it might be.

I just said, why should we just protect the Tenkile

in half of the Torricelli mountain range

and leave half the lot vacant,

where there's also another critically endangered

tree kangaroo, called the Weimang?

So for me, it was like, oh wow, it's still in existence,

it's not extinct!

We still got a chance here, we've got to go for it!

This is what we're going to do.

This is part of the reason I came here in the first place.

I'm not going to do a half ass approach and do half the job,

no, gonna do the whole bloody job or not at all.

- Morning. - Morning.

When I first came to Papa New Guinea,

I didn't really know how I was going to convince people

to stop hunting tree kangaroos.

And I guess I've evolved over a long period of time.

It's try this approach, try this approach,

try this approach, different ways.

Even maybe simpler, using--

And it was a lot of work.

You know, a lot of thought, a lot of time, a lot of effort.

And we talked about nutrition and gardening

and water tanks and rabbit farming.

And you know, it was such a big job and you know,

not getting paid to do the job, wore me down.

And I, you know, I was like, Jim,

I haven't got the energy to do this anymore.

And then he comes back from the Weimang villages

and says, we've got to sign up these villages.

And I was like, what the fuck are you serious?

I am, I'm done Jim, I can't do any more.

I am full up of work.

And I just got so angry and I was just like,

why am I doing this?

You are on your own on this!

I was ready to go see you later, pal, I'm done.

24 extra villages under our program.

That was a huge deal for us.

That's extra travel.

That's extra education, more meetings, more rabbit cages

for over 6,000 extra people.

I mean, Jim's a big picture man, he's the visionary

and I'm the one who actually has to make it all work.

I have to put it all together and make it happen.

I was overwhelmed.

So I go from my morning walk, trying to unwind

and try and just collect my thoughts again and get focused.

Often, I try and debrief on my way up the hill

and then have a stretch and then listen to the birds

and just take it all in because there's nowhere else

like this that I know of.

When you're standing here at the mountain,

it's very easy to put everything

back into perspective again.

It took a lot of internal dialogue within myself

to actually say, you know,

there's more to this than me and there's more to this

than what I'm feeling.

There's more to this then, you know,

wanting to give up, you know.

I think that's where it flipped into a life of purpose.

(children laughing)

And I did a pregnancy test.

- [Jim] I remember the pregnancy test.

- Yeah and then I told Jim and showed him the little stick

and it's all really exciting and scary at the same time

because living here and you know,

there's not a lot of support for women here.

I went to the local hospital.

That's where the local people do it.

I thought, well, I'm part, I'm experiencing the culture.

You know, I need to get myself involved in all of this.

And then I realized that I wasn't prepared to go that far.

And I thought, no, I need to go home to have this child.

As I was in labor, feeling the labor pains and contractions

and I felt guilty actually, being in this beautiful,

clean hospital with white sheets and you know,

nurses at my beck and call and doctors in the next room.

And I thought, how do women do this in the bush?

And you know, the stories that we'd heard of women

giving birth in toilets and women giving birth

when they were scraping sago and totally on their own.

- Taji was born on the 8th of June, 2006,

the same birthday as me.

I was just blown away, 'cause I was there.

I was the anchorman, cut the umbilical cord.

Saw the whole thing, pretty bloody amazing.

- We went to a pediatrician and I thought, well,

we need to make sure that we're prepared

to take a child back to PNG.

(airplane rumbling)

The first thing that the pediatrician said to me was,

well, if you want my advice,

you don't take a child to Papua New Guinea.

He was just straight up matter of fact about it.

And he said, "So is that possible?"

(somber instrumental music)

So Taji was only two months old when we arrived in Lumi.

And it was great because we had all of the staff

here greeting us.

You know, there's a little sign saying welcome home Taji

and Jean and I, it was beautiful.

It was really nice.

And you know, I was crying and you know,

everyone was giving us hugs and you know,

they just welcomed him in. - Big deal, huge deal.

(speaking in foreign language)

Hardly anyone had seen a white baby before.

Everyone wanted to hold him, just started holding him.

They didn't want to give him back!

No, no, no, come on.

I want to white baby!

No, no, it's our white baby.

(somber instrumental music)

I love being a dad.

But as a new parent,

I was now more protective of Jean and Taji.

Their safety and security was of paramount importance

and I started looking at our environment

in a very different way.

Papa New Guinea is often dubbed the land of the unexpected.

And that certainly comes true when people lose their cool

and become violent very quickly, people can just snap.

(yelling in foreign language)

But every time it happens, there's a string of events

that have occurred beforehand building up to that explosion.

(dramatic music)

It seems the fuses are quite short in PNG sometimes

and we've been very surprised on a number of occasions

when people become very angry.

So in Papua New Guinea I've been attacked

at least six times with pretty brutal bush knives.

You know, I thought I was going to get cut up

on a number of occasions, real heart beating stuff,

where it's like, whoa, you only see this in the movies.

What am I doing in this?

But there was this one time when things got taken

to another level.

I was traveling back to base by road.

It was a dispute over money and he came at me

with a very sharp ax.

He was gonna kill me, I thought this is it.

This is it, game over.

He had that look like he wanted to kill in his eye.

It was just that look of terror.

I defused the situation.

I paid the bribe, didn't feel comfortable in doing that,

but I got away with my life.

That was absolutely terrifying to go through that.

I already know what to think.

It was just absolutely gut wrenching

and if he's prepared to try and kill me,

is he going to be prepared to try and kill Jean and Taji

if on a patrol in that area.

(airplane whooshing)

- [Jean] At least clear that Jim had to get out of PNG

and so we went back to Australia.

- [Jim] A lot of things went through my mind.

Is it worthwhile going through this sort

of drama and stress?

I received counseling

and my dad died suddenly, out of the blue

and it hit us hard.

(men yelling)

Should I just stay here in Australia

where it's nice and comfortable,

with a lovely house, family?

I can just go back into a normal job

and raise my son and spend more time with my wife,

spend more time with family and friends

and just sort of plod along.

Hey, I've done six, seven years in PNG, that'll do.

- [Jean] So my perspective on that situation

was quite different to Jim's.

My perspective was it's just one man,

don't let him get to you.

I think by that stage, I had invested so much of my energy

and work into it that I wasn't ready to give it all up.

Are our lives worth risking

for the protection of the tree kangaroo and the environment?

And I think in my mind it was like, yeah, it is still.

And I had to convince him to come back.

(airplane whooshing)

- [Jim] Coming back to PNG meant a few changes

to the way in which we worked.

We added more security

and applied for funding to expand the base.

When the money came through,

TCA exploded into a frenzy of activity.

Adding 24 new villages to our program

meant we couldn't travel to all of them.

So it made better sense if people came to us.

We built a research station, staff accommodation

and a training center for up to 120 people

to attend our meetings and courses.

(sweeping instrumental music)

- [Jean] We now had 42 villages under the TCA project

and we had two representatives from each village.

This meant that the communication flow could continue.

We could have education programs.

We could still have community engagement.

So we teach the representatives, who in turn,

go back to the villages and teach the others.

(speaking in foreign language)

With a background in teaching science

at a high school in Australia, my approach was to focus

on the science.

And then through this process,

I realized that learning the facts,

learning the science of species

and protecting the environment is actually quite irrelevant

in the end, because it's about the people themselves,

how they live their lives, how they feel about themselves.

Their emotional intelligence is really important

to create cultural change.

So I noticed that people didn't have

a lot of confidence in themselves.

They underestimated their capabilities.

And then you're explaining why.

I'm trying to teach people how they can develop the skills

that they need to become independent,

to help communities grow,

not just in terms of their infrastructure

and the things that we provide them,

but help them grow personally.

(woman speaking in foreign language)

Okay, you stop, you stop, say yes, okay.

Stop the negative thinking.

(woman speaking in foreign language)

A lot of the programs that we've implemented

do involve both men and women.

And even though Papua New Guinea is primarily patriarchal,

by nurturing the female leaders that we were recognizing,

that's helped transition, I think, into the 21st century.

(soothing instrumental music)

It was clear to us when we went to communities

and started to talk to people and were living

in the villages themselves, that, you know,

there were a lot of issues that people had to deal with

and one of the issues was water supply.

- [Jim] Most villages live on the ridges of mountains.

So although plenty of rain,

they don't have any way to collect it.

- Most women that live in the communities

that we work with, they live on the top of a hill

and they have to go down to the creek to collect water.

And it sometimes can take up to an hour, round trip

and that has to be done every morning and every afternoon.

So it's two hours in a day a woman spends collecting water.

So we applied to the European Union that had a program

called the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project

and it was being rolled out throughout the whole country.

So we applied to introduce 243 water tanks.

The idea of doing a water supply program was like, well,

you know, we've never done this before.

How are we going to do this?

It was out of our league, but it was so important

to the local people to actually have something,

some tangible benefit for the conservation work

that they are involved with and so we just had to learn.

Like everything else, you know,

thrown in the deep end and just work it out.

(dramatic music)

This was messy for us.

I mean, people have to remember that it's just myself

and Jim and the local people.

It was a huge undertaking.

We had to write the grant of our lifetime.

(dramatic music)

(people cheering)

- Eventually we got the green light

and what a moment that was when we got the go ahead

to buy all these tanks and help the people out,

more than they've ever been helped before in their lives.

It was something they've always wanted

but never thought they'd get.

A lot of surprise, a lot of eyes like saucepans,

like wow, we're going to be getting how many tanks?

So some villages got you know, more than 10 tanks.

(dramatic music)

Once we got the grant, we got the green light,

I headed down to Wewak to place the order

for all of these water tanks and the supplies.

So Mikey, are these the 1,000 gallon tanks?

- [Mikey] Yeah, this the one.

- Okay, write this down.

We need 243.

7,290 sheets of tin roofing,

eight foot length.

Now as a small NGO, I'd never really written a big check

before and this was massive.

And I was nervous, I was shaking.

I actually botched the check up, I was that scared.

First time writing a check for nearly 2 million kina.

That's a big deal.

(dramatic music)

When I saw that first truck come up, I was so relieved.

I thought, you beauty.

We can do this, we can make this happen.

(dramatic music)

- [All] We will build a tippy tap.

We will build a VIP toilet.

We will build a tappy tank

to help out village get healthy.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Jim] We had to teach people how to build

the water tanks stands,

putting gutters up and connecting the downpipes

to those gutters and then connecting to the water tank,

explaining the importance of the filter in the water tank.

(speaking in foreign language)

- [Jean] The education side of the water program

is quite intense.

It's like you taking the community through a whole

step by step process.

It all goes back to this community ownership

and mobilizing the communities,

getting them excited and motivated and yeah,

I really want to do this.

- [Jim] Once we got to the point where the villages

could collect the materials,

then they had to physically carry all of those water tanks

and cement and tin roofing back to their villages.

(man speaking in foreign language)

(sweeping instrumental music)

- [Jim] They took it, that was huge.

- [Jean] They initiated those consultations

with their neighbors and organizing the exchange of food

and coordinating those groups to come together.

It's a lot of coordination.

We're talking hundreds of people involved in carrying

those materials from the base, to their village.

So the women were amazing.

They were carrying 40 kilogram bags of concrete

on their heads and carrying children at the same time.

They would then stop, feed everyone

and then away they'd go again.

(speaking in foreign language)

(tribal chanting and music)

(crowd yelling)

(crowd clapping)

(woman speaking in foreign language)

- Yes!

Everyone's using water tanks.

They've all got tanks and they're all starting

to tell stories and then the story started to filter in,

how happy everybody was.

- [Jean] You know, people started to go, aw,

here's a tangible benefit.

- That was sort of like, wow,

this is what conservation is about.

We're addressing the issues,

we're giving people what they've asked for

and it's making a difference.

That's when I thought, man, we've made a huge impact.

These animals are not going to be extinct now.

That's what I thought after those water tanks.

That's what I felt, that's what I knew.

(soothing instrumental music)

(low chattering)

- [Jean] When the tanks, the toilets and the tippy taps

were installed, I think that many people saw this

as a sign of our true commitment to the area.

This immediately sparked a more positive attitude

from people towards their environment.

(crowd laughing)

(crowd cheering)

- The only way to do conservation in Melanesia

is on a win-win basis, where the community is gaining

benefits from the conservation of species.

And that is a very difficult thing to do.

Jim and Jean have found an ingenious way of doing that,

where they've in effect, restored the prestige

the Tenkile enjoyed in earlier times when,

it was a fully tribal society

and this was a very deeply spiritual animal for the people.

- [Jim] Now with belief in themselves,

that they can go on with projects

and take the lead for their own environment.

(speaking in foreign language)

And they're now labeling Tenkile as their gold medal,

their gold medal and they want to keep it shining.

That has been sent to us from the villagers.

- I believe that what Jim and Jean are doing

is absolutely the only way to go

if we care about preserving the forest

and the animals in it.

But unless we can have the local people as our partners,

then we can't hope to conserve

any other animals living in the forest.

- [Jean] When you leave a village,

especially after such a success,

everyone wants to say goodbye,

and it can take quite a long time to get on your way.

This goodbye was especially important to me

because Jim and I had decided that I would be returning

to Australia with Taji permanently in a month.

(somber instrumental music)

Taji needs to start school next year.

We could stay here and do homeschooling with Taji,

but I just don't want to be his teacher.

I just want to be his mum.

He has never really had a routine.

He's just a free spirit and he can go and do

whatever he wants.

So, I think he's going to really miss a lot of that.

Feel sad about leaving.

I think I'll be in tears in a couple of weeks from now.

- I don't know how I'm gonna cope without Jean.

It's gonna to be difficult emotionally without Jean there

and I'll get lonely, I'll miss her.

(chanting)

The day to day activities, talking to the locals

that'll be fine.

I won't be able to confide in any one.

It's going to be very hard without Jean being with me.

But this is our life, this is my work

and conservation is what I do.

So we're going to have to slowly work our way through it

and take the hurdles as they come.

(soft instrumental music)

- Last day, I remember being very emotional,

having to say goodbye to everyone and being female,

you always have that special bond with women

in Papua New Guinea.

You have that real nice connection there.

And seeing the kids and the kids saying goodbye to Taji,

you knew that that was going to be really hard

for them as well.

Next time you come back--

Bye!

(speaking in foreign language)

(somber singing)

It'll be a test, that's for sure.

We'll see how it goes.

Like all of our work over the last you know,

nearly nine years, we're pretty flexible.

So if it doesn't work, then we remodify it.

- [Jim] Go back to the drawing--

- [Jean] Evolve, like we have with everything.

- [Jim] Which will probably mean Jean'll

have to come back here and Taji'll have to skip school.

(both laughing)

(sweet instrumental music)

So TCA is becoming more sustainable,

the longer we're running and we're doing that

by addressing the real issues of the people

and being realistic on what projects can be successful.

Fingers crossed that rabbit farming will become

more successful and it will become part of the norm

in a couple of generation's time.

That's the hope.

We've now embarked upon fish farming,

which seems to be the easiest so far.

And so we're breeding fish here

and sending out young fish to the villages

and they're making their own ponds,

just digging holes in the ground and letting them fill up

with rain water and putting their fish in there.

We want to help the people with their cash crops

so that they can get money in their pockets

to pay for school fees, the basic necessities,

the things that we take for granted in Western society.

The cash crops, we're looking at mostly cocoa and vanilla.

- [Jean] And if we can strengthen those projects

through training and providing the markets for them,

they will have a constant source of income,

independent of TCA.

- [Jim] So right now, we're pretty close to establishing

the Torricelli mountain range

as a legislated conservation area.

(bell rings)

(speaking in foreign language)

The conservation area will encompass

the forested areas, where the tree kangaroos live

and also the villages themselves.

So everything is under this huge conservation area.

We spread the net as wide as we possibly can

so that everything is being addressed.

The needs of the people, in terms of better lifestyles

for them, the management of the rainforest,

so that they're going to be there for future generations

and surveying the endangered species

to make sure that they're improving as well.

- We just could not predict that we would have

this much impact on the lives of people,

not just the lives of the Tenkile tree kangaroo.

The intention is to actually have the local people

running this project on their own.

- [Jim] It's been a long road.

I think that's the case with conservation

anywhere in the world, but we're very happy

with the relationship with the Papua New Guinea government.

- And now we're at the stage where we're waiting

for the government to give us the final tick of approval

and we're very close and we're really excited

about that happening soon, we hope.

I think the thing that humbles me most is the local people,

who have very little, welcomed us into their communities,

not knowing who we were.

We were complete strangers to them,

and yet they were there with open arms saying,

yes, come let's work together.

- Gives one great hope really,

that people can do what they have done and to have brought

such a change in such an area as rural PNG.

It's really remarkable.

- Jim and Jean have changed a small part of the world

with their dedication.

But what's more important is they've taught us

how to do conservation in tribal areas.

And that model-led pioneered is going to be valuable

in South America, Africa and Australasia.

I think it's the key to preserving hundreds,

if not thousands of species.

- Present this award to Jim and Jean.

(dramatic music)

- This award is extremely special to us

because it's the first award we've achieved together

and it really has given both Jean and I a huge boost

to continue our work in saving the Torricelli mountains,

working with people.

With work with 50 villages at the moment.

We're now being by the Papua New Guinea government

and this will hopefully, mean we'll be able to protect

at least 180,000 hectares

of mid mountain tropical rainforest.

(audience clapping and cheering)

- The rainforests of the world

and around the equator are an essential part

of the whole system that governs the earth, climatically.

The vapor which rises from the forest

to create the conditions in the atmosphere,

which affect the rest of the world.

There are changes and always have been changes.

The speed at which we are now changing the surface

of our planet is very frightening.

- Open your eyes, open your mind to what's going on here.

You've got a choice.

It's in the world's hands, we've got to do something.

If we don't do it, we could lose so much.

- We depend on the natural world

for every bite of food we take.

We're dependent on it for every lung full of air.

We are in short, part of the natural world.

And if you damage the natural world,

you damage humanity in the end.

- To keep them the Torricelli mountain ranges

protected as a conservation area,

there's a lot we need to do.

We need more support, we need more partners.

We need more people understanding how important it is

to save the rainforest in the world.

And hey, they can start with this one

because this is working right here.

(people cheering)

(sweeping instrumental music)

(sweet acoustical music)