- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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).
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- "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.
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- "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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Because of the rich diversity in the
forest, the group rarely had to stray more than a few kilometers (miles)
from their base camp.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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- There did not appear to be any immediate
conservation threat to the area, which has the status of a wildlife sanctuary,
he said.
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- "No logging permits are given to
this area, there is no transport system - not a single road," Beehler
said.
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- "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."
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- http://www.conservation.org/xp/news/press_releases/2006/020706.xml
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