Foja Mountains

In December 2005, scientists from the United States, Indonesia, and Australia spent a month in the Foja Range documenting flora and fauna from the lower hills to near the summit of the range. The expedition team was co-led by Bruce Beehler and Stephen Richards and included scientists from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, Cenderawasih University, the Smithsonian Institution, Conservation International and other institutions. In February 2006, the expedition team released details of new species including:

• One bird, a honeyeater with scarlet wattles,[4] officially described in 2007 as the wattled smoky honeyeater (Melipotes carolae).
• 20 frogs
• Four butterflies
• Five palms
• A rhododendron with a white, scented flower across the NeverPeack Mountains

The scientists documented:

• The first photographs of Berlepsch's six-wired bird of paradise and the golden-fronted bowerbird, both of which were only known from a minute number of trade skins previously.[5]
• A golden-mantled tree-kangaroo (Dendrolagus pulcherrimus), believed to be near-extinct.
• Western long-beaked echidnas that allowed scientists to pick them up, evidence that the area has had no human presence

The human population of the Foja Range is 300, living in the 7,500 square kilometres of low-lying forest. The 3,000 square kilometres of mountainous jungle appear to have been untouched by humans until the 2006 scientific expedition. There are no roads in the mountains, so scientists had to travel by helicopter, landing on a boggy lakebed. Six permits were needed before the 11-member team could legally enter.

In December 2007, a second scientific expedition was taken to the mountain range. The expedition led to the discovery of two new species: the first being a 1.4 kg giant rat (Mallomys sp.) approximately five times the size of a regular brown rat, the second a pygmy possum (Cercartetus sp.) described by scientists as "one of the world's smallest marsupials."[6]

An expedition late in 2008, backed by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, National Geographic Society and Smithsonian Institution, was made in order to assess the area's biodiversity. New types of animals recorded include a frog with a long erectile nose, a large woolly rat, an imperial-pigeon with rust, grey and white plumage, a 25 cm gecko with claws rather than pads on its toes, and a small, 30 cm high, black forest wallaby (a member of the genus Dorcopsis).[7]