Ecology of Indonesian Papua Part One. Andrew J. Marshall
each expedition was accompanied by a Dutch army officer. The first British Ornithologists’ Union Expedition was led by W. Goodfellow; animals (but few plants) were collected by A. F. R. Wollaston, G. C. Shortridge, and W. Stalker. Working mostly along the Mimika, Utakwa (also known as Waitakwa) and Setakwa rivers, the expedition met with great difficulties and some loss of life (Stalker being drowned) and in addition failed to get high in the central range. Wollaston, however, soon organized his own expedition to continue the quest. Assisted by C. Boden Kloss of the Federated Malay States Museums (Kuala Lumpur), he collected animals and quite a few plants (BMNH; plants also at Kew and elsewhere), also making many geographical and topographical observations (regrettably, most of his notes were lost during the descent). The team reached the Mt Carstensz (now Mt Jaya) glacier fields but was finally stopped at the end of January 1913 by stupendous cliffs and a wall of ice; due to bad weather they did not realize they were still some 550 m below the summit. The animals (by several zoologists) and plants (by H. N. Ridley) were published mainly in Transactions of the Linnean Society, and as well collectively reissued as a fine two-volume set. Wollaston’s expedition was recently revisited in a memoir by his son, Nicholas, My Father, Sandy (2003).
The challenge of the "snow mountains" would, as already mentioned, attract one German explorer—another physician-naturalist and ethnographer, Max Moszkowski of Breslau (Wroclaw) University. In 1910–1911 he attempted to reach the "snow mountains" via the Mamberamo River. After explorations in its lower regions (including Teba, Sauwi, Samberi, Assewari, and Tama, and in the lagoon areas and estuaries to the east of the Mamberamo), he began his ascent south from a base camp on the Naumoni River, just before the foothills. But soon, at Edi Falls, just before Pionierbivak camp (ca 2°25'S) Moszkowski lost all his equipment and had to return to Manokwari. After his return to Naumoni Moszkowski passed the falls and through the Van Rees Mountains, and entered the Lake Plain. However, by now—not surprisingly—he was becoming overextended. Towards the end of 1910, while some ways up the Van Daalen (or Zuid River), a tributary of the Tariku River (ca 138°5'E, in the Nassau Ranges) he had to turn back on account of lack of food. In January 1911, again at Edi Falls, while returning he lost many of his collections. A number of plants were, however, brought back (Berlin, Leiden); zoological and entomological (Berlin) as well as ethnographic collections were also made. Moszkowski’s own contributions, apart from his expedition reports, are all in ethnography and anthropology, a not insignificant accomplishment.
The Last Frontier II: Independent Exploration (1898–1914)
In addition to the great expeditions, there were a number of individual undertakings in the final years of the post-Napoleonic century. Some related to official activities; but, as before, other explorers worked independently or under outside sponsorship. Many—official as well as non-official—also were keen photographers; advances in equipment and technique resulted in great additions to the photographic record. But offsetting this was a contemporary decline in fine color-plate art, one of the last of the "grand" hand-painted works having been R. B. Sharpe’s Monograph of the Paradiseidae, or Birds of Paradise, and Ptilonorhynchidae, or Bower-Birds (1891–1898), a book with much on Papuasian exploration.
Not surprisingly, with better links the western regions and islands continued to attract the most attention. Of particular interest after 1900 would be the newly discovered twin Anggi Lakes in the southern part of the Arfaks. In April 1904, A. van Oosterzee, from its establishment in 1898 administrator at Manokwari and a zealous explorer of his district, sent living plants (Bogor) from these lakes—as L. S. Gibbs has written, the first European to collect there. Yet, on van Oosterzee’s visit, potatoes were already available from local gardens—the result of indirect missionary introductions. In 1906–1907 the American zoologist Thomas Barbour collected amphibians and reptiles around the Anggi Lakes and on Waigeo Island (MCZ). Barbour was followed up to the Anggi Lakes in 1907 and again—for a stay of close to a year—in 1908–1909 by Pratt with his sons F. and C. In between (1907–1908) the Pratts spent much time around Humboldt Bay, including visits to the Cyclops Mts and Lake Sentani (insects, Tring/BMNH; plants, Bogor, Kew). After the Pratts came Gjellerup with Hubrecht in 1912 (see above) and, in 1913, the senior Pratt. The senior Pratt would lend photographs to Gibbs (see below) for her book, her own not having been satisfactory.
But perhaps the most important independent figure of the period is L. S. Gibbs—the first independent lady explorer in New Guinea and moreover the first visiting scientist with an explicit interest in tropical mountain ecology and vegetation. In six days in December 1913 she obtained over 330 numbers (BMNH, with some duplicates elsewhere) at the Anggi Lakes (via the coastal village of Wariap), with some 150 more over the rest of her trip (Doré Bay, Roon Island, Biak Island, Wakdé Island, and Humboldt Bay—in all from November 1913 to February 1914). Her results, which also included checklists of her collections with descriptions of novelties, appeared as Dutch N.W. New Guinea (1917)—a botanical landmark, later to be drawn upon by P. W. Richards for his classic Tropical Rain Forest (1952). Gibbs had earlier visited Borneo (Mt Kinabalu) and Fiji as part of a quest towards working out the structure and origins of the Malayo-Pacific mountain flora—much of it featuring an "extra-Malayan facies," as Beccari (see above), von Mueller, and some others had earlier indicated.
In the northern mainland, Walter Goodfellow visited along the coast, collecting birds in 1904–1906 (BMNH). In 1915 C. L. J. Palmer van den Broek—who was very helpful to Gibbs while Resident (in Ternate)—collected in the Cyclops Mountains and Humboldt Bay (Bogor). In the south, Merauke and its biotically distinctive region had now become relatively accessible. Hassan collected various animals on the Utumbui River and on the Gelib River and at Okaba (west of Merauke) in 1909–1910 (Leiden; plants Bogor)—perhaps with Versteeg as part of the second of Lorentz’s expeditions (see above). In 1910 Rothschild’s agent A. S. Meek collected birds and insects at Merauke, along the Digul and Eilanden rivers, ascending Mt Goliath (in the wake of the Dutch expedition), there reaching 2,800 m (birds, Tring/AMNH; insects BMNH). H. Elgner collected insects in 1912 at Fakfak (Senckenberg).
A few further collectors visited the western islands, some of them as members of two expeditions from Freiburg, Germany. In 1907–1908 Roux, a Swiss, and H. Merton, a German, collected various animals on the Aru and Kai Islands. Misool was visited in 1911 with O. D. Tauern collecting animals (Leiden). Botanically, however, after 1898 these islands would largely be neglected, remaining so until at least the 1930s.
With the outbreak of World War I in mid-1914, field activity largely came to an end. Travel became restricted and war conditions soon disrupted world shipping. Though the Netherlands and the Indies remained neutral, after 1915 further exploratory work became unfeasible. The final report of the Dutch Military Expeditions (Militaire Exploratie) appeared in 1920—a very useful summary of what had been accomplished, though not rich in biological data. Among its many maps is one in four sheets for the whole territory—the best then available; another (after p. 74) depicts the Military Expedition teams’ routes, as well as the routes of earlier explorers. It would be five years before serious activities resumed in western New Guinea, and then not for long in the old tradition. Costs of everything were higher, and—significantly—much of the primary interest in exploration had been satisfied. A zenith had passed, although with three more major undertakings to come in the 1920s there would be for a time somewhat more continuity in biological exploration in the west of New Guinea as opposed to the Australian-administered eastern territories. In publication, few new "grand series" would emerge. Some earlier runs, such as Nova Guinea (with many illustrated contributions on orchids by J. J. Smith) and the Siboga volumes, continued, but—as already for the eastern part of New Guinea—the presentation of results generally became more diversified as well as modest, usually appearing in specialist professional journals.
Between World War I and World War II (1918–1942)
Although German New Guinea had come under Australian military rule very early in World War I, Papuasia otherwise was not a theater of war and most local administration continued uninterrupted, aided by enhanced revenues for commodities. Some collecting could thus be accomplished in the later 1910s: W. Bradtke in the Duke of York Islands, 1917 (plants, Brisbane); John Todd Zimmer in Woodlark Island, Papua, collecting animals and coconut pests (the latter as part of his extension work), 1917–1918 (BMNH); and, in mid-1918, C. T. White in central Papua (see Plants section below). Keysser also was active