Flown by helicopter to a mountain preserve virtually untouched by humans, the scientists found more than 40 species new to science. They also spotted the legendary six-wired bird of paradise, a species with distinctive wiry head plumes that was first described in 1897 but that has proved elusive ever since.
Team leaders on Tuesday described how they spent two weeks in December, butterfly nets and binoculars at the ready, traversing the foggy slopes of the Foja Mountains in Papua province. Among trees encrusted with moss and draped with huge ferns, they marveled as birds and animals approached with no fear.
"It has a fairyland quality," said Bruce Beehler, an ornithologist with Conservation International in Washington and the expedition's co-leader. "It's a spectacularly beautiful Garden of Eden."
Beautiful!
AND: Be sure to click on the slideshow at the link.
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7 comments:
That is beautiful. Thanks for linking to it. Now I hope people, save the occasional scientists, stay out.
I agree w/ Palladian. Somebody needs to make sure this place stays relatively untouched. It'd be nice to know that there's still a pristine "fairyland" alive and well on this planet.
Facinating article. Could have been even better by leaving the last paragraph off of it.
We should get some hunters in there as soon as possible to, you know, steward the environment and generate hunting license revenues to protect the animals to be hunted.
Just jocking!
Yeah, I was wondering how they would work in a jab at the Bush administration. Forget about all that useless space exploration! We have plenty to keep us Earth-bound. There certainly aren't enough scientists around to do both!
Way cool
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