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Scientists Find Dozens Of
New Species In 'Lost World'

Conservation.org
2-7-6
 
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Scientists surveying an isolated Indonesian jungle discovered dozens of new species of frogs, butterflies and plants, and glimpsed large mammals that have been hunted to near- extinction elsewhere, the team announced Tuesday.
 
The expedition also found rare animals that were remarkably unafraid of humans during the rapid survey of the Foja Mountains, an area with more than a million hectares of old growth tropical forest in Indonesia's easternmost Papua province, 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, noting that the enigmatic animals were probably so unwary because they never had seen people before.
 
The December 2005 expedition - organized by the U.S.-based environmental organization Conservation International and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences - was funded by the National Geographic Society, the Swift Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Global Environment Project Institute.
 
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, boggy lakebed surrounded by forests near the range's western summit, where they set up camp at an altitude of 1,500 meters (yards).
 
"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."
 
The scientists said they discovered 20 frog species - including a tiny microhylid frog less than 14 millimeters (a half inch) long - four new butterfly species, and at least five new types of palms during their trip.
 
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.
 
One of the most remarkable discoveries was the Golden-mantled Tree Kangaroo, an arboreal jungle-dweller new for Indonesia and previously thought to have been hunted to near extinction, and a new honeyeater bird, which has a bright orange face-patch with a pendant wattle under each eye, Beehler said.
 
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 to continue the field work.
 
One of the reasons for the rainforest's isolation, he said, was that only a few hundred people live in the region and game in the mountain's foothills was so abundant that they had 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."
 
 
http://www.conservation.org/xp/news/press_releases/2006/020706.xml
 

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