Introduction to Papua

      1.1. Introduction to Papua

      BRUCE M. BEEHLER

      PAPUA, THE WESTERN HALF of the great subcontinental island of New Guinea, encompasses 416,129 km² and supports the largest tract of old growth tropical forest wilderness remaining in the Asia-Pacific region. Dominated by the huge Central Cordillera that generates abundant rainfall, the rivers of Papua drain northward into a vast interior basin (the Mamberamo/Meervlakte) and south into a triangular alluvial platform that broadens as it reaches eastward to the border with Papua New Guinea. At its westernmost, Papua is dominated by a welter of small mountain ranges (accreted terranes), peninsulas (Vogelkop [Bird’s Head], Wandammen, Fakfak, Kumawa), and island groups (Raja Ampats, Cenderawasih Bay Islands). In many respects, Papua resembles its eastern counterpart, mainland Papua New Guinea, but its mountains are higher (reaching to the snow line), its swamps are larger (e.g., Mamberamo, the Asmat), its population is smaller (ca 2.2 million vs. ca 5 million), and the exploitation of its vast forests less extensive at the time of this writing. As with Papua New Guinea, Papua is home to many traditional cultures (250 by one estimate; Petocz 1989). Many of these are forest-dwelling societies, who have provided remarkably prudent stewardship of their forest resources. Thus Papua’s forest wilderness and diverse marine ecosystems are human-managed natural systems that give the impression of being pristine. For environmentalists, conservationists, and research biologists, Papua is a rich mother lode of natural and cultural history to be documented studied, shared, and preserved.

      Wonders of Papua

      By any standards Papua is special and shrouded in mystery. For nearly a half-century (1962–2000) it was essentially inaccessible to all but a few international field researchers (see Hope et al. 1976) and thus a terra incognita. As each year went by, other blank spots on the globe were filled in by intrepid adventurers and naturalists, making Papua more and more enticing to outside naturalists. Those smitten with Papua could only read early accounts and examine the pre-1962 holdings of museums and research institutions to get an idea of what lay behind the Papuan (then West Irian or Irian Jayan) veil of the unknown. We did know that Papua was home to the tropical Pacific’s only glaciers. We did know that Papua was the home to hundreds, no, thousands of undescribed species of plants and animals, not to mention the lesser life forms. Jared Diamond rediscovered the Golden-fronted Bowerbird in the Foja Mountains in 1980. Tim Flannery described a new mountain-dwelling tree kangaroo in 1994. Gerald Allen collected his first rainbow fish in Papua in 1980 and described his most recent new Papuan species in 1998. Clearly there is so much for us to learn about this little-studied land. Adventurers were claiming "first contacts" with forest-dwelling peoples as recently as 1990—this added to the several hundred named ethnic groups inhabiting Papua, each with its own language, culture, art, and cosmology.

      Geographic and Political Nomenclature

      Let us begin our overview of Papua with some discussion of geographic and political nomenclature (see map on end sheets to this book). New Guinea is the term we use to describe the whole island, this largest tropical island, some 2,700 kilometers long by 900 kilometers wide. The eastern half of the island is today the mainland section of Papua New Guinea, which achieved independence from Australia in 1975. The western half of the island is today known informally as Papua ("West Papua" in some circles). Papua became the official name of western (Indonesian) New Guinea, Indonesia’s easternmost province in 2000. In 2004, Papua Province was "illegally" but formally bisected; the easternmost and central sections retain the name Papua, and the westernmost section is Irian Jaya Barat (a planned Central Irian Jaya has been put on hold because of a court ruling).

      Western New Guinea has held various names over the last hundred years. During the days of Dutch colonial administration this area was named Dutch New Guinea, part of the Dutch East Indies. Upon Indonesian accession of this last fragment of Dutch colonialism, the region was named West Irian (Irian Barat). Shortly thereafter it was given the name Irian Jaya ("glorious Irian"), and more recently Papua. This last is confusing mainly because the southeastern portion of mainland Papua New Guinea was once officially named Papua, when overseen by colonial Australia. Finally, political activists call western New Guinea "West Papua"—the name that the local assembly had chosen for the planned independent nation that was to arise in 1962 through a United Nations mandate.

      Physiography, Geography, and Geology

      Papua is a complex piece of the planet, partly because of its convoluted tectonic history, discussed in some detail in Chapter 2.1. In brief, the Papuan component of the Australian tectonic plate has been rafting northward, building a prodigious central cordillera as well as sweeping up island arcs in the north and northwest. This plate continues to drift northward and northern coastal ranges are presumably still rising.

      Mountains define Papuan geography, no doubt. Two east-west ranges dominate—the Central Cordillera (Merauke Range, "Maoke" is a misnomer; this includes a western component, Sudirman Range, and an eastern component, Jayawijaya Range) and the north coastal ranges that extend westward into Cenderawasih Bay as rugged Yapen Island. The Central Cordillera has been created by the compression of the Australian plate with the Pacific plate, with massive uplift over the last several million years. The highest points of the Sudirman and Jayawijaya ranges are oceanic sediments. This cordillera rises to more than 3,000 meters for its entire length in Papua, creating a challenge for Indonesian road builders wishing to link up the northern and southern catchments. The cordilleran watershed dips rather gradually on its northern face and abruptly on the south side. Heavy rainfall striking the southern scarp has deeply dissected this southern face, creating scores of sediment-laden and unstable rivers that dump out onto a rocky alluvial plain in the south that is almost 200 km wide in the east and only 40 km wide in the far west (west of Timika).

      The highest peaks of Papua are scattered about the main cordillera. Highest of all is Mt Jayakusuma or Mt Jaya (4,884 m) once known as Mount Carstensz or Carstensz Toppen, dominating the western terminus of the Merauke Range. Nearby Ngga Pilimsit or Mount Idenburg stands at 4,717 m. In central and eastern segments of the cordillera stand Mount Trikora (formerly Mount Wilhelmina) at 4,730 m and Mount Mandala at 4,640 m. Small, rapidly melting glaciers cap Jaya and Pilimsit.

      The accreted island arcs in the north can be seen today as isolated coastal ranges: the Cyclops, Foja, and Van Rees Mountains (north of the Tariku and Taritatu [formerly Idenburg] rivers), mountainous Yapen Island, the Wandammen, Arfak (2,940 m), and Tamrau mountains (2,824 m) of the Vogelkop Peninsula, as well as the Raja Ampat Islands west of the Vogelkop. Strange tectonic contacts apparently have also produced the Kumawa and Fakfak mountains south of the Vogelkop on the Bomberai and Onin peninsulas. The Bird’s Neck region, which connects the Vogelkop with the main body of Papua, is karstic, with fjordlands, white sand barrens, and lakes.

      Papua is scored by a range of major rivers both north and south, east and west. In the north, the Mamberamo system drains the interior Mamberamo Basin and virtually the entire northern watershed of Papua’s central range. The main channel of the north-flowing Mamberamo cuts between the Foja Mountains (on the east) and Van Rees Mountains (on the west) on its way to the sea. This ramrod straight, swiftly-flowing stream is one of the most remarkable on this great island, even though it is only 150 km in length. At the head of the Mamberamo, the river drains the great interior basin swamplands that are infested by meander belts and oxbow lakes. The Taritatu (formerly Idenburg) River drains the eastern half of the basin and the central mountains to the south, its tributaries reaching to the Papua New Guinea border and nearly to Jayapura. Its western branch, the Tariku (or Rouffaer) River, drains the smaller western side of the basin, and quickly divides into the main flow of the Rouffaer (on the north) and the Van Daalen (to the south). The Van Daalen drains the north slope of the Central Cordillera,