A ‘Lost World’ in Indonesia: Papua

By Wombat | February 8th, 2006 | 3 Comments »

It’s the traveller’s dream. Finding an ancient culture or a place where boots have never trod before. It has actually happened but instead of travellers these were scientists!. They discovered dozens of new species in an isolated jungle area in eastern Indonesia.

Scientists discover dozens of new species in isolated jungle

JAKARTA (AP): Scientists discovered a “Lost World” in an isolated Indonesian jungle, identifying dozens of new species of frogs, butterflies and plants — as well as large mammals hunted to near extinction elsewhere, members of the expedition said Tuesday.

The team also found wildlife that were remarkably unafraid of humans during its rapid survey of the Foja Mountains, an area in eastern Indonesia with more than a million hectares (two million acres) of old growth tropical forest, said Bruce Beehler, a co-leader of the month-long trip.

Two Long-Beaked Echidnas, a primitive egg-laying mammal, simply allowed scientists to pick them up and bring them back to their camp to be studied, he said.

The December 2005 expedition to Papua province on the western side of New Guinea island was organized by the U.S.-based environmental organization Conservation International and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

“There was not a single trail, no sign of civilization, no sign of even local communities ever having been there,” said Beehler, adding that two headmen from the Kwerba and Papasena tribes, the customary landowners of the Foja Mountains, accompanied the expedition.

“They were as astounded as we were at how isolated it was,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Washington D.C. “As far as they knew, neither of their clans had ever been to the area.”

Papua, the scene of a decades-long separatist rebellion that has left an estimated 100,000 people dead, is one of Indonesia’s most remote provinces, geographically and politically, and access by foreigners is tightly restricted.
The 11-member team of U.S., Indonesian and Australian scientists needed six permits before they could legally fly by helicopter to an open, bogy lakebed surrounded by forests near the range’s western summit.

The scientists said they discovered 20 frog species — including a tiny microhylid frog less than 14 millimeters long — four new butterfly species, and at least five new types of palms.

Their findings, however, will have to be published and then reviewed by peers before being officially classified as new species, a process that could take six months to several years.

Because of the rich diversity in the forest, the group rarely had to stray more than a few kilometers (miles) from their base camp.

“We’ve only scratched the surface,” said Beehler, vice president of Conservation International’s Melanesia Center for Biodiversity Conservation, who hopes to return later this year with other scientists.