£9.99
Trees of Paradise is a true story of environmental hope. Two nature lovers, Ric Edelman and Nigel Hughes, set off to find virgin rainforest and end up fighting to save one with a remote tribes-people in Papua New Guinea. Ric and Nigel pushed their way through the steaming Hunstein Range of Papua New Guinea. Here they witnessed the splendour and terror of primal nature: crocodile rivers, giant trees, electric-blue butterflies and Birds of Paradise and find a people hardly touched by Western civilisation.
They learn that 2,000 square miles of the forest is earmarked for industrial logging and, overnight, are catapulted into a near-impossible adventure of another kind – how could one of the great forests of this world be saved? “It is from the forest that we get our food, our medicine – and our dreams!” said William Takaku, Director of Papua New Guinea’s National Theatre, who became the authors’ mentor. Nigel and Ric’s new journey took them by dugout canoe into the rainforest villages. They won the trust of Kiawi, the Luluai (leader) of the remotest village, and Matthew, the 13-year-old Clan Chief. Today – 30 years later – the Hunstein Range forest remains standing. And after 30 years of friendship and Cultural Exchange, it is guarded by its empowered and resolute people.
