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"Garden of Eden" explorer coming to South African SciFest

Christina Scott

One of the scientists who announced their discovery of a "lost world" in an
Asian jungle earlier this year is coming to Africa.

Dr Bruce Beehler has confirmed that he will be attending South Africa's
popular national science festival, the week-long SciFest, which attracts
40,000 people every year in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape.
Beehler helped lead the international team of astonished and delighted
scientists who uncovered dozens of new animal and plant species in a remote part of Indonesia last Christmas. "It's as close to the Garden of Eden as you're going to find on Earth," Beehler once told the Discovery Channel.

The team recorded new butterflies, 20 new frogs, and a series of remarkable plants that included five new palms and a rhododendron with giant white flowers. They also found a honeyeater bird previously unknown to humanity.

"It's beautiful, untouched, unpopulated forest; there's no evidence of human
impact or presence," is how Beehler described it to the BBC. The
researchers - American, Indonesian and Australian - trekked through the
mist-shrouded Foja Mountains, a wildlife sanctuary on the island of New
Guinea, for nearly a month.
"We were dropped in by helicopter. There's not a trail anywhere; it was
really hard to get around," said Dr Beehler. Even two local indigenous
groups, the Kwerba and Papasena people, customary landowners of the forest, were astonished at the area's isolation.

"The men from the local villages came with us and they made it clear that
no-one they knew had been anywhere near this area - not even their
ancestors," Dr Beehler said.

The researchers also solved a major ornithological mystery - the location of
the homeland of Berlepsch's six-wired bird of paradise. First described in
the late 1800s through specimens collected by indigenous hunters, several
subsequent expeditions failed to find it.

On only their second day, without even leaving camp, the amazed scientists watched as a male six-wired bird of paradise performed a mating dance for a potential mate.

"This bird had been filed away and forgotten; it had been lost," explained
Beehler. "To rediscover it was, for me, in some ways, more exciting than
finding the honeyeater. I spent 20 years working on birds of paradise;
they're pretty darn sexy beasts," Dr Beehler enthused.

The team also recorded a golden-mantled tree kangaroo, which was previously thought to have been hunted to near-extinction.

Mr Beehler said some of the creatures the team came into contact with were remarkably unafraid of humans.

Two long-beaked echidnas, primitive egg-laying mammals, even allowed
scientists to pick them up and bring them back to their camp to be studied,
he added.

The expedition was organised by the US-based organisation Conservation International, together with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. The scientists intend to return to the mountains later this year, confident that the local people will protect this newly-discovered resource.

"The key investment is the local communities. Their knowledge, appreciation
and oral traditions are so important. They are the forest stewards," Dr
Beehler said. ENDS

More information:

 www.scifest.org.za

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