|
Delicious
|
"Lost world" found in Indonesia
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060207/...onment_species
Quote:
OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists said on Tuesday they had found a "Lost World" in an Indonesian mountain jungle, home to dozens of exotic new species of birds, butterflies, frogs and plants.
"It's as close to the Garden of Eden as you're going to find on Earth," said Bruce Beehler, co-leader of the U.S., Indonesian, and Australian expedition to part of the cloud-shrouded Foja mountains in the west of New Guinea.
Indigenous peoples living near the Foja range, which rises to 2,200 metres (7,218 ft), said they did not venture into the trackless area of 3,000 sq km (1,200 sq miles) -- roughly the size of Luxembourg or the U.S. state of Rhode Island.
The team of 25 scientists rode helicopters to boggy clearings in the pristine zone.
"We just scratched the surface," Beehler told Reuters. "Anyone who goes there will come back with a mystery."
The expedition found a new type of honeyeater bird with a bright orange patch on its face, known only to local people and the first new bird species documented on the island in over 60 years. They also found more than 20 new species of frog, four new species of butterfly and plants including five new palms.
And they took the first photographs of "Berlepsch's six-wired bird of paradise", which appears in 19th century collections but whose home had previously been unknown.
The bird is named after six fine feathers about 4 inches (10 cm) long on the head of the male which can be raised and shaken in courtship displays.
BIRD, BOWER, BERRIES
The expedition also took the first photographs of a Golden-fronted bowerbird in front of a bower made of sticks, while he was hanging up blue forest berries to attract females.
It found a rare tree kangaroo, previously unsighted in Indonesia. Beehler said the naturalists reckoned that there was likely to be a new species of kangaroo living higher altitudes.
The scientists visited in the wet season, which limited the numbers of flying insects. "Any expedition visiting in the dry season would probably discover many more butterflies," he said.
Beehler, who works at Conservation International in Washington, said the area was probably the largest pristine tropical forest in Asia. Animals there were unafraid of humans.
"I suspect there are some areas like this in Africa, and am sure that there are similar places in South America," he said.
Around the world, pristine areas are under increasing threat from expanding human settlements and pollution. A U.N. meeting in Brazil in March will seek ways to slow the currently accelerating rate of extinctions.
Beehler said the Indonesian government was doing the right thing by keeping the area off limits to most visitors -- including loggers and mineral prospectors.
The scientists cut two trails about 4 km (2.5 miles) long, leaving vast tracts still to be explored.
|
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060208/...sia_lost_world
Quote:
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Soon after scientists landed by helicopter in the mist-shrouded mountains of one of Indonesia's most remote provinces, they stumbled on a primitive egg-laying mammal that simply allowed itself to be picked up and brought to their field camp.
ADVERTISEMENT
Describing a "Lost World" apparently never visited by humans members of the team said Tuesday they also saw large mammals that have been hunted to near-extinction elsewhere and discovered dozens of exotic new species of frogs, butterflies and palms.
"We've only scratched the surface," said Bruce Beehler, a co-leader of the monthlong trip to the Foja Mountains, an area in the eastern province of Papua with roughly 2 million acres of pristine tropical forest.
"There was not a single trail, no sign of civilization, no sign of even local communities ever having been there," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C.
Two headmen from the Kwerba and Papasena tribes, the customary landowners of the mountain range, accompanied the expedition, and "they were as astounded as we were at how isolated it was," Beehler said.
"As far as they knew, neither of their clans had ever been to the area."
The December expedition was organized by U.S.-based Conservation International and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, and funded by the
National Geographic Society and several other organizations.
Minutes after the small team of American, Indonesian and Australian scientists were dropped into a boggy lake bed and set up camp near the mountain range's western summit, they said they encountered a new species of bird a red-faced and wattled honeyeater.
The next day they saw Berlepsch's Six-wired Bird of Paradise, described by hunters in the 19th century and named for the wires that extend from its head in place of a crest.
They watched in amazement as a male bird performed a courtship dance for a female, shaking the long feathers on his head, and later took the first known photograph of the bird.
The scientists said they discovered 20 frog species including a microhylid frog less than a half-inch long four new butterfly species, and at least five new types of palms.
Among their most memorable experiences were their encounters with the Long-beaked Echidna, members of the primitive egg-laying group of mammals called the Monotremes, which twice allowed themselves to be picked up and brought to the scientists' camp for observation.
Beehler attributed the lack of fear displayed by the long-snouted spine-covered Echidnas (pronounced eh-KID-na) to the fact that they probably had never come into contact with humans.
But other animals, like the Golden-mantled Tree Kangaroo, an arboreal jungle-dweller previously thought to have been hunted to near-extinction, were much more shy, he said, and quickly disappeared into the dense forest after being spotted.
Though the scientists' findings will have to be published in scientific journals and reviewed by peers before being officially classified as new species, other environmentalists said the discoveries were hardly surprising in a country renowned for its rich biodiversity.
"There are many species that have not been identified" in Indonesia, said Chairul Saleh of the World Wildlife Fund, which has made hundreds of its own discoveries in the sprawling archipelago in the last 10 years.
Papua, the scene of a decades-long separatist rebellion that has killed an estimated 100,000 people, is one of Indonesia's most remote regions geographically and politically, and access by foreigners is tightly restricted.
The scientists said they needed six permits before they could legally visit the mountains located on the western side of New Guinea island.
Stephen Richards of the South Australia Museum in Adelaide said he and other team members got a glimpse of what the island "was like 50,000 years ago, because there's been no hunting, no impact of transport or anything like that."
Because of the rich diversity in the forest, the group rarely had time to stray more than a few miles from their base camp.
Beehler, vice president of Conservation International's Melanesia Center for Biodiversity Conservation, said he hopes to return this year with other scientists.
One of the reasons for the rain forest's isolation, he said, was that only a few hundred people live in the region and game in the mountain's foothills is so abundant they have no reason to venture into the jungle's interior.
There did not appear to be any immediate conservation threat to the area, which has the status of a wildlife sanctuary, he said.
"No logging permits are given to this area, there is no transport system not a single road," Beehler said.
"But clearly, with time, everything is a threat. In the next few decades there will be strong demands, especially if you think of the timber needs of nearby countries like China and Japan. They will be very hungry for logs."
|
I read about this in the local newspaper the other day and thought it was really cool. It's amazing how there's more than 6 billion people on earth, and we can travel across the world in hours yet there's places like this that's been untouched for centuries.
__________________
It is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick - Dave Barry
|