Ecology of Indonesian Papua Part One. Andrew J. Marshall
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to the west and south. Major trade probably did not begin until after 1000 bce. The first Europeans to sail the coastline of Papua were Portuguese, in the 1500s, and they were followed by the whole cast of exploring nations (Spanish, Dutch, then English). These explorers were seeking trade routes as well as products to trade. This exploring era lasted from the 1500s to the early 1800s. It was followed by a period of regular trade (bêche-de-mer or trepang, bird of paradise skins, turtle shell, massoi bark, etc.), which, in turn was followed by initial settlements (trade driven), then missionary activity. Early naturalist/explorers included Alfred Russel Wallace, who visited the Vogelkop (Bird’s Head) and Raja Ampat Islands in the 1840s, and Odoardi Beccari and Luigi d’Albertis, who visited the Arfak Mountains in the 1870s. The Dutch made a preliminary claim to New Guinea west of the current border of 141 east longitude in 1826, but this infamous border was not formalized with the colonial powers of Britain until 1895 (in the south) and with Germany in 1910 (in the north). What followed was a rather weak attempt to establish government outstations, some rather stronger efforts to explore the interior (1900–1930), and to surmount Papua’s forbidding high peaks. Remarkably, the highest peak of Papua, Mt Jaya, was not successfully ascended until 1962 by Austrian Heinrich Harrer. Dutch, British, and American biological expeditions were conducted into the remote interior in the 1930s. Most famous was the Snow Mountains Expedition led by Richard Archbold, who discovered the populous Baliem Valley in 1938 during his aerial reconnaissance flights that allowed the expedition to ascend successfully high into the interior mountains. World War II brought this era of exploration to a close. After the War, independence issues dominated Indonesia and this led to the eventual annexation of Papua into the young Indonesian state in 1962. Indonesia has aggressively developed Papua through a bout of transmigration of landless poor from western Indonesia, through significant government and military oversight (which have included considerable conflict, tension, and bloodshed between Papuan ethnics and western Indonesians), and through natural resource exploitation (mining, fishing, logging). One expects this exploitation to expand considerably in the next several decades, and there is a question whether this exploitation will be predatory or, we hope, environmentally and culturally sustainable. Certainly that issue is a theme that runs through this book.
This Book and Its Goals
This book, following the model of the preceding eight volumes of the Ecology of Indonesia series, seeks to provide a clear, comprehensive, yet concise account of the environment of this easternmost region of the vast archipelagic nation of Indonesia. The text is written with a university student in mind, but there is authoritative material that will be of interest to the serious academic researcher as well. We have departed from the plan of the original series in that we have sought out the world’s experts to contribute chapters on their specialties. In doing so, we have collected the very latest thinking on each subject. Through judicious editing, we have made certain that this cutting-edge material is accessible to the reader. We have attempted to avoid use of specialized and jargon terminology, or at least carefully defined these terms for the reader. Our goal is to have compiled a broad and comprehensive accounting of the natural history of Papua.
Literature Cited
Diamond, J. (1999). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W. W. Norton and Company, New York.
Hope, G.S., J.A. Peterson, U. Radok, and I. Allison (eds.). 1976. The Equatorial Glaciers of New Guinea. A.A. Balkema, Rotterdam.
Petocz, R. 1989. Conservation and Development in Irian Jaya. Brill, Leiden.
Oatham, M., and B. Beehler. 1997. Richness, taxonomic composition, and species patchiness in three lowland forest plots in Papua New Guinea. Pp. 649–668 in Dallmeier, F., and J. Comisky (eds.) Forest Biodiversity Research, Monitoring and Modeling: A Conceptual Background and Old World Case Studies. Parthenon Publishing, Casterton, UK.
Marshall, A. J., and Beehler, B. M. (eds.). 2006. The Ecology of Papua. Singapore: Periplus Editions.
1.2. Biological Exploration of New Guinea
DAVID G. FRODIN
BIOLOGICAL EXPLORATION in New Guinea and its surrounding islands has a relatively long post-Columbian history, but until the 1760s it was casual, with "curiosa" and narrative descriptions the most tangible results. Even the "great voyages" of the subsequent decades paid but fleeting visits, with some—notably the Endeavour—actually rebuffed; the few contemporary attempts at settlement from outside were failures. Only in the last third of the nineteenth century did serious exploration begin, with the last large "white spaces" in the interior highlands "filled in" just as World War II approached.
The marvelous birds of paradise, whose center of diversity is in mainland New Guinea, were among the first objects of natural history to attract attention from Europeans, but for long they were known only from their legless skins, obtained in direct or market trade. But the land soon came to be seen as hostile to settlement, even for the Portuguese and Spanish and, after them, the Dutch East India Company, so no extended surveys were made. Indeed, until the latter part of the eighteenth century (thus through most of Linnaeus’s lifetime) New Guinea was effectively "beyond the frontier," with only its western fringes anywhere near a commercial realm (and so—fortunately for posterity—within the reach of Rumphius at Ambon). Otherwise, acquisition of geographical and natural history knowledge was casual, with Dampier among the few prominent contributors.
The "great voyages" of the seven decades preceding 1840 did touch upon several parts of mainland New Guinea and its neighboring islands, with the naturalists of one voyage demonstrating that birds of paradise indeed had legs. Yet, although they established the main geographical outlines of the region, their visits were brief and their collections, though primary, were generally small and from but few localities. Apart from these contributions—not all of them fully reported upon—the only substantial collections until 1870 were those made in the late 1820s on the southwestern coast by Zipelius and Macklot and later—mainly in the Vogelkop (Bird’s Head) peninsula—by Wallace in 1858 and von Rosenberg from then through the 1860s. Not even the formal annexation of western New Guinea by the Dutch Indian government in 1848 provoked significant activity.
The opening of the Suez Canal, the development of settlements in Australia, increasing commercial interest in the Pacific Islands, the growth of the plume trade, and scientific curiosity (particularly in the wake of Wallace’s Malay Archipelago) finally led to sustained outside interest in Papuasia and an opening up of its interiors. A veritable "rush" by explorers then ensued, particularly in the wake of the territorial acquisitions by Germany in the northeast and its large island neighbors, and Britain in the southeast—all under the gaze (and even sponsorship) of the now well-developed popular press.
By 1914 very considerable progress had been made, with after 1900 greater official interest—but largely in the Dutch and German spheres, surpassing the very effective work by Macgregor, administrator in British New Guinea over the decade leading up to 1898. Sadly, that was succeeded by relative indifference—particularly after 1901 with transfer of control to Australia. After World War I (though slightly later in western New Guinea), the rest of New Guinea also became something of a "backwater"—with few official undertakings in natural history. Exploration did, however, continue—though largely under outside sponsorship—leading to further major discoveries, particularly in the 1930s. By the end of that decade, the major outlines of the biota had become known—particularly after the prodigious efforts of the Third Archbold Expedition—and the age of "primary" exploration was over.
In contrast to the "Great War," during World War II New Guinea and its islands were a major theater of conflict, greatly increasing the region’s profile. The stage was now set for three decades of "secondary" exploration, much of it under the auspices of the administering countries (including their "metropolitan" organizations), and the establishment of local collections and research facilities. Through the 1960s, substantial resources were allocated to land, agricultural, forest, and marine surveys in both east and west; in 1959 the Dutch mounted a final, "major" exploring expedition to "the last white spot on the map," Juliana Top (now Mt Mandala) and the western Star Mountains. There was also much extra-official exploration and other activity, including the establishment