3 comments
Really cool. I hope they succeed in establishing native rights to the forest before the logging companies make them extinct again.
I wouldn't be surprised if more such discoveries were found. Papua is, as best as I can describe it, insane.
Indeed, it seems the interior of the country is so little-known and so unspoiled by modern civilisation, it would be surprising if we don't have any unexpected discoveries coming out of there in the nearish future.
Not to get all internet indignant about it, but the island is currently split into two countries thanks to the colonization by Indonesia. Which human rights advocates and indigenous leaders consider to be a systematic ethnic cleansing and cultural erasure of the indigenous Melanesian Papuan population. Along with an ecocide driven by a toxic mix of military occupation, corporate exploitation, and resource extraction.<p>The situation in West Papua is essentially one of these least recognized humanitarian and ecological tragedies slowly happening before our eyes.