Ecology of Indonesian Papua Part One. Andrew J. Marshall
and natural historian, and accompanied by M. A. Lieftinck, D. R. Pleyte, Sjöqvist, and E. Lundquist (for more on Lundquist, see also the section on the years between the World Wars, above) along with Indonesian officials (mantris) Main and Djamhari visited the Raja Ampat Islands (including Misool, Salawati, Batanta, and Waigeo), the Sorong region, and parts of the southwestern coast. From mid-1949 Bergman spent some months on the eastern side of the Vogelkop Peninsula, including a visit to the Anggi Lakes via Ransiki as well as a visit to the Wandammen Peninsula. Over the course of a year and four months following their arrival, visits at different times were made in the Sorong region (their logistical base) as well as in Raja Ampat. Pleyte and two officials (mantris) focused on Misool as well as around Sorong, but left the field before the end of 1948—possibly in advance of imminent political changes. Apart from Pleyte’s botanical collections, most of the harvest was zoological (birds, Stockholm; insects, Bogor, Leiden) although Bergman did collect some plants around the Anggi Lakes.
After 1949 and the advent of a separate Dutch administration, most efforts in biotic exploration were until 1963—with one exception below—individual (or in small specialist teams) or through state bodies such as the Forestry Service (Boswezen). Being largely disciplinary, they are taken up under the sections on Flora and Fauna of Western New Guinea, below.
There was only one multidisciplinary "large" expedition in the old style, traversing an extensive area and with geographical as well as natural science objectives—that of April–August 1959 to the Star Mountains. In addition to air support (as in 1938–1939), there now was helicopter transport (though one of the two helicopters was destroyed during operations). Leading the expedition were the zoologist L. D. Brongersma (then also director of the zoological museum at Leiden, now the Naturalis Museum) and G. F. Venema. Participating botanists included C. Kalkman, B. O. van Zanten, and J. J. F. E. de Wilde, while W. Vervoort (as well as Brongersma) collected animals (and, with Kalkman, plants). A naval surgeon, M. O. Tissing, took part in the ascent of the principal objective, the 4,640-meter ice-capped Juliana Top (now Mt Mandala)—there collecting a few plants. Kalkman and van Zanten reached Mt Antares (3,380 m, in the western Star Mountains). From the expedition base in the Sibil Valley (east of the Baliem), where there was already an airstrip, two members (Bär and Danselaar) afterwards pushed north, completing a land crossing—the first on the western side of the border, at the island’s widest point (the east had been crossed by land in 1927). The collections (Leiden) included, among the plants, a good representation of bryophytes (a speciality of van Zanten); these accordingly went first to Groningen. Results appeared in a relaunched Nova Guinea and elsewhere. A popular account by the two leaders is Het Witte Hart van Nieuw-Guinea (undated; in English as To the Mountains of the Stars, 1963). The expedition was a kind of "finale," and the Dutch knew it. They did, however, thus fill perhaps the last significant "white spot" on the world map (apart from much of Antarctica), the discoveries of Cerro Neblina (Venezuela/Brazil) and in the Vilcambamba (Peru) being just prior. This drama was enhanced by the nearly-simultaneous cross-island trek (also from south to north, but slightly west of the Dutch route) of a French film crew under J.-Y. Gaisseau; this resulted in the much-appreciated The Sky Above, The Mud Below—an experience of most of us who have done any real traveling in Papuasia.
International politics and sensibilities—and American pressure—now brought about an end to three-and-a-half centuries of the Dutch in the East Indies. In late 1962 control of Papua passed to a United Nations Temporary Executive Administration (UNTEA); on 1 May 1963 Indonesia took control. The territory was given provincial status and initially named Irian Barat; not long afterwards, this changed to Irian Jaya and remained so until the end of the 1990s. The Dutch administrative seat, Hollandia, was renamed Sukarnopura and, later, Jayapura. Although Indonesian sovereignty awaited final determination by plebiscite, the Act of Free Choice (Pepera: Penentuan Pendapat Rakyat) in 1969, higher education was given priority, and soon Cenderawasih University was built, its main campus at Abepura (outside Jayapura) with agriculture and forestry in Manokwari.
For some years afterwards there were no effective outside contacts. Only after 1969 and the Act of Free Choice plebiscite (Pepera: Penentuan Pendapat Rakyat) was there a renewal of visits by scientific teams, mainly from Europe, North America, and Australasia. During 1971–1973 the Australian Universities’ Expeditions—organized at Melbourne University—undertook in two operations glacio-logical and biological investigations on and around the Mt Jaya (formerly Mt Carstensz) glaciers. Geoffrey S. Hope and Judy A. Peterson (Canberra) were the team biologists. The expeditions’ work was summarized in The Equatorial Glaciers of New Guinea (1976) edited by Hope, Peterson, L. Allison, and U. Radok. In 1972 the former King Leopold III made his second expedition to Papua (the first had been, as already indicated, in 1929 with van Straelen). With J. Raynal (Paris), collecting continued into 1973 near the Mt Jaya area, Baliem Valley, and other places (Brussels, Bogor, Paris, Leiden).
In 1974–1976 a multidisciplinary expedition from Germany worked in the vicinity of the upper Eipomek River in the eastern Nassau Range—home to the Eipo, an isolated outlier group of the Mountain Ok of central New Guinea—under the title "interdisziplinäre Erforschung von Mensch, Kultur und Umwelt im zentral Hochland von West-Irian (Neuguinea)." With support from the Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft and organized through the Museum für Volkerkunde in Berlin (already enriched by Moszkowski’s, the Behrmann expedition’s, and other ethnographic collections), a considerable team of specialists was active over some two years in various parts of the Eipomek River, including its eastern and western tributaries (and surviving two serious earthquakes, locally very destructive); their botanical collections are in Berlin. Their reports have since 1979 appeared in a special series "Mensch, Kultur und Umwelt in zentralen Bergland von West-Neuguinea" (Berlin).
The 1980s represented another quiet period, with the next interdisciplinary contributions being collections of papers—only a minority biological—rather than expedition reports, although some reflected recent fieldwork. Both involved the Irian Jaya Studies Programme in the Netherlands, and had as a primary focus the Vogelkop Peninsula. They were Perspectives on the Bird’s Head of Irian Jaya, Indonesia (1997, Rodopi), ed. J. Miedema, C. Odé, and R. A. C. Dam; and Bird’s Head Approaches (1998, Balkema, as number 15 in their series Modern Quaternary Research in Southeast Asia), ed. G. J. Bartstra. The biological papers are all general in nature; however, of interest for exploration history is a chapter in Perspectives on the 1907–1915 Dutch Military Expeditions (Militaire Exploratie).
By the 1990s and the advent of the Convention on Biological Diversity, however, there was renewed interest in how much—or how little—was known of the biota of New Guinea, both in east and west. For Papua this led notably to a 1997 workshop in Biak, sponsored by Conservation International in Indonesia and the United States; a Laporan Akhir / Final Report appeared in 1999 with a number of maps (and a CD-ROM with several database files) depicting perceived priority areas, for different biotic groups as well as in general.
Following the workshop, Conservation International’s Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) became active on the ground. In 1998 fieldwork was carried out on the Wapoga River area of Yapen-Waropen regency (southeast of Waren), an area—without much prior attention—inland from Olifant-berg, one of A.B. Meyer’s 1873 localities. All sites were at 1,100 m or less save one (1,890 m, reached by helicopter), and partly accessible because of previous prospecting in the area by the U.S. mining firm Freeport McMoRan (see also below). The results appeared in RAP’s Report 14. A later Marine RAP was active in the Raja Ampat Islands (Report 22).
The Raja Ampat island group now attracted the attention of another U.S. organization, The Nature Conservancy (TNC). In 2002 a team from TNC carried out a several weeks’ survey with the aid of a 75-foot twin outboard-motored speedboat (the Pindito); of plants, 550 numbers were collected (Bogor in first instance). The 15-strong expedition (a third from media) was led by R. Salm (TNC); its zoologists were G. Allen (fish), D. Ivereigh (birds), A. Sumule and E. Turak, and botanists included J. P. Mogea and W. Takeuchi with support also from F. Liuw and D. Neville. Islands visited included Misool, Kofiau, Batanta, and Salawati along with the ultramafic Kawé—and, near to it, the partly ultramafic Waigeo. A first botanical report appeared in 2003 (Takeuchi in Sida 20: 1093–1116).
As a result of these surveys, the very high marine diversity of the Raja Ampat Islands—already partially known due to the Siboga and other earlier