The Ecology of Papua: Part One

The Ecology of Papua brings together 76 authors to catalog for the first time the many facets of Papua’s environment. Designed for students of conservation, environmental workers, and academic researchers, it is a richly detailed text, dense with biogeographical data, historical reference, and fresh insight on this complicated and marvelous region. We hope it will serve to raise awareness of Papua on a global as well as local scale, and to catalyze effective conservation of its most precious natural assets. New Guinea is the largest and highest tropical island, and one of the last great wilderness areas remaining on Earth. Papua is noteworthy for its equatorial glaciers, its vast forested floodplains, its imposing central mountain range, its Raja Ampat Archipelago, and its several hundred traditional forest-dwelling societies. Papua remains inadequately studied and largely pristine. One of the wildest places left in the world, Papua possesses extraordinary biological and cultural diversity. Today, Papua’s environment is under threat from growing outside pressures to exploit its expansive forests and to develop large plantations of oil palm and biofuels. It is important that Papua’s leadership balance economic development with good resource management, to ensure the long-term well-being of its culturally diverse populace.