Tuesday, February 07, 2006

‘Lost World’ of wildlife found in Indonesia

Expedition found 20 new species of frogs, photographed bird rituals:

“It’s as close to the Garden of Eden as you’re going to find on Earth,” Bruce Beehler, a Conservation International scientist who led the expedition, said in a statement.

“The first bird we saw at our camp was a new species,” he added. “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.”

and

“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 said from Washington, D.C. “As far as they knew, neither of their clans had ever been to the area.”


Let's hope it can stay that way.

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