I returned to PNG in September – thanks to the Walkley Foundation/Sean Dorney Pacific Journalism Grant – to collect field reports and interviews for a forthcoming story for The Monthly on climate justice. But as always in PNG, I came across so many other urgent and important stories. This was one of them. I was in Madang when I heard claims that a sacred matmat had been devastated by loggers operating without authority. A large delegation of men from the community walked out of their forest to catch a PMV into town to spend a long day recounting what had occurred. (Pictured left are two of them, Bryan Lavate, secretary of the local landowners association, and Suburam village chief Sandu Ovot, whose ancestors graves were desecrated.) It was the beginning of a complex piece of reporting trying to figure out the labyrinthine, murky world of Malaysian logging companies active across PNG. For a variety of reasons I wasn’t satisfied with how this piece turned out – I didn’t have the time, resources or word-count to do the nuanced issues justice. But I hope to return to this topic if not this incident. And I hope that this report may achieve something useful for the community. Here’s the link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/09/fighting-off-the-bulldozers-in-the-sacred-kwila-forests-of-papua-new-guinea