Talk:New Guinea Highlands

Talk

Discussion for: New Guinea Highlands • View • Links • Related changes

Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.

Page scope

New Guinea Highlands is a Growing Region: a named cultivation region that sits above Growing Areas and below the regional complex and gene pool. It is one page for the highlands on both sides of the border between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, drawn on the seven provinces of Papua New Guinea's Highlands Region and on Highland Papua. Its growing areas so far are Oksibil and Yahukimo, both in Highland Papua. The rest of the island's central range is not part of it.

Data verification

Check the main page for the sources behind each statement. Discuss the boundary, the provinces the region takes in, and the accessions and news items that belong to it here.

Discussion

Why the region is on the map

• Time (Michael Ware, 9 April 2001) writes that the highland provinces run along New Guinea's mountain spine from near Goroka to Mount Hagen, Wabag and Mendi, and that most villages there, and some on the coast, grow marijuana. It names the ranges around Mount Wilhelm and describes plants in a kitchen garden and on the hillside in the Kompri Valley near Henganofi, Eastern Highlands.
• Bourke and Harwood (2009), Food and Agriculture in Papua New Guinea, p. 227: most production is in the highlands at about 1,400–2,200 m, in parts of Eastern Highlands, Simbu, Western Highlands and Central provinces. The International Narcotics Control Board's report for 2001 (para. 564) says that cannabis is cultivated primarily in the highlands.
• Police uprooted cannabis in Simbu in 2014 (Gogo village, Chuave) and 2019 (Mani village, Sinasina-Yongomugl), and in Enga in 2019 (Wapenamanda).
• On the Indonesian side, army task forces found cannabis at Aldom near Oksibil in September 2025 and at Sinimbuk, Pegunungan Bintang, in October 2026, and at Kima, Air Garam and Kurima in Yahukimo in July and September 2026. Police said in June 2025 that a garden in Kurima belonged to an armed group.
• No source read describes the seed or the plants of the highlands as a landrace, and the article does not call them one. Time and other sources name a cannabis called Niugini Gold, which has its own page.

The name

The page takes the geographic name of the island's central highlands, so that one title covers both countries. In Papua New Guinea the sources speak of "the highlands"; Papua New Guinea Highlands redirects here. No source read gives a separate Indonesian name for the range, and none is made a redirect.

Growing status

The status is Active. Police uprooted plants in Simbu in 2014 and 2019 and in Enga in 2019, and Bourke and Harwood describe cannabis markets in Goroka, Kundiawa and Mount Hagen in 2007. In Highland Papua army task forces found fields in 2025 and 2026. No source says that growing in the region has ended.

How the border is drawn

• The border is a proxy, drawn on administrative units: the seven provinces of Papua New Guinea's Highlands Region (Eastern Highlands, Simbu, Jiwaka, Western Highlands, Enga, Southern Highlands and Hela; OpenStreetMap relations 311774, 311773, 3778576, 311772, 311771, 311770 and 3778575) and Indonesia's Highland Papua province (Papua Pegunungan, relation 14309176). The union is about 117,000 km² in two parts, the figure in the infobox. Sandaun and Western provinces of Papua New Guinea lie between the parts.
• These are the provinces the sources point to. Bourke and Harwood name Eastern Highlands, Simbu and Western Highlands (Jiwaka was split from Western Highlands in 2012). Time runs the highland provinces west to Wabag (Enga) and Mendi (Southern Highlands; Hela was split from it in 2012). Highland Papua holds the Oksibil and Yahukimo growing areas.
• Central Province is outside, although Bourke and Harwood name it: it is a coastal province, and the page is drawn on the highlands. The rest of the central range, west into Central Papua and east into Morobe and the Owen Stanley Range, is outside, because no source read places cultivation there.
• Whole provinces are a coarse proxy. Most of the land in them is not under cannabis, and parts of Highland Papua, Yahukimo among them, run down into lowland.
• The infobox point (−6.05, 144.03) is the centre of the Papua New Guinea part. The centre of the whole region falls between the two parts, outside both.
• The border is not drawn from accession or news points.

Accessions

The one accession from Papua New Guinea on the wiki, VIB-PNG-UNK-0100000001, records no place below the country, so it is not attached to the region.

Sources

• Bourke and Harwood (2009), ANU Press: Section 3.5 (pp. 223–227) and the marijuana passage of Section 5.17 (p. 394) were read.
• Ware (2001), Time: read in full.
• INCB (2002), report for 2001, chapter III, Oceania: para. 564 was read.
• Press. Every article cited was read in full: The National (9 July 2014; 15 April 2019), EMTV (12 March 2019), kumparan (27 September 2025), RRI (10 October 2026), Antara (16 July 2026; 10 September 2026) and JPNN (13 June 2025).

Where the sources disagree

• How many provinces. Bourke and Harwood say that significant quantities are grown in at least four provinces (p. 227) and, later in the book, in at least five (p. 394). The article uses the provinces named on p. 227.
• When cannabis arrived. Bourke and Harwood date its arrival in Papua New Guinea to the mid to late 1960s, "probably" with young expatriates. Other sources, set out on the Papua New Guinea page, give other dates; the article gives Bourke and Harwood's view as theirs.