“Lost World” of Wildlife Found in Jungle
 

An expedition to one of Asia’s most isolated jungles discovered a virtual ‘‘lost world” of new species, giant flowers, and rare wildlife that was unafraid of humans, researchers say.

The team said they revealed dozens of new species including frogs, butterflies, plants, and an orange-faced honeyeater, the first new bird from the island of New Guinea in more than 60 years.

The December 2005 expedition explored the mist-shrouded Foja Mountains of western New Guinea. The team of U.S., Indonesian, and Australian scientists was led by the Washington, D.C.-based wildlife group Conservation International.

The team captured the what they said were the first photos of exotic birds such as a male Berlepsch’s Six-Wired Bird of Paradise (Parotia berlepschi).

It also reported finding the Golden-mantled Tree Kangaroo (Dendrolagus pulcherrimus), previously known only from one mountain in neighboring Papua New Guinea.

“It’s as close to the Garden of Eden as you’re going to find on Earth,” said Bruce Beehler of Conservation International, a co-leader of the expedition.

“The first bird we saw at our camp was a new species. Large mammals that have been hunted to near-extinction elsewhere were here in abundance. We were able to simply pick up two Long-Beaked Echidnas, a primitive egg-laying mammal that is little known.”

The findings solved one major ornithological mystery: where Berlepsch’s Six-Wired Bird of Paradise has its homeland, he added. The bird was first described in the late 19th century through specimens collected by indigenous hunters from an unknown location on New Guinea. It had been the focus of several subsequent expeditions that failed to find it.

On the second day of the recent month-long trip, Beehler recounted, amazed scientists watched as a male Berlepsch’s bird of paradise performed a mating dance for a female in the field camp. This was the first time Western scientists had observed a live male of the species, and it proved the Foja Mountains was the species’ true home, Beehler contended.

The expedition took place almost 25 years after the discovery of the Golden-fronted Bowerbird’s homeland, in the same mountain range, stunned the scientific world in 1981, researchers said. This time, they reported capturing the first photographs of the bird strutting at its bower—a tower of twigs and other forest materials it builds to attract females.

The new species of honeyeater, the first new bird discovered on the island of New Guinea since 1939, has a bright orange face-patch with a pendant wattle under each eye, researchers added. Honeyeaters are slender birds with long beaks and long brush-tipped tongues for extracting nectar from flowers, native also to Australia and Hawaii.

Other discoveries reported included what may be the largest rhododendron flower on record—almost six inches across—along with more than 20 new frogs and four new butterflies.

Local Kwerba and Papasena people, customary landowners of the forest, welcomed the explorers and served as guides and naturalists in the vast tract, researchers said. These people told the team that game was hunted in abundance within an hour’s walk of their village.

Such plentiful availability of food and other resources means the mountain range’s interior—more than 300,000 hectares (900,000 acres) of old growth tropical forest—remains untouched by civilization, the researchers said. Thus the the whole Foja forest tract of more than 1 million hectares (3 million acres) would constitute what they said was pristine tropical forest and a key region for biodiversity conservation.


A researcher cradles a golden-mantled tree kangaroo, the first such tree kangaroo ever spotted in Indonesia. (© Bruce Beeher/CI)


One of the first ever photos of Berlepsch’s Six-Wired Bird of Paradise (Parotia berlepschi). (© Bruce Beeher/CI)


Courtesy Conservation International
and World Science staff