'A Place Apart'

Scientist Bruce Beehler recounts his trip to one of the last untouched areas in the world, where he and his team discovered 39 new species.
By Fred Guterl, Newsweek

Bruce Beehler is one of only a few people lucky enough to have witnessed untouched wilderness. A vice president for Conservation International, he spent 24 years planning a trip to a remote cloud forest in the Foja Mountains in Papua, New Guinea. His team of Indonesian, American and Australian scientists made the trip in December and discovered 39 new species of animals and plants. Beehler spoke with NEWSWEEK's Fred Guterl about the trip. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Are you surprised by all the excitement over your trip?
Beehler: I'm mystified, a little bit. Usually what I do doesn't receive much recognition. It's a bit of a treat.

I understand that Jared Diamond, the author and geographer, inspired the trip.
All the research I've done in my life has been following the lead of Jared's work. He was the first non-indigenous person to go up into this mountain range in 1979. He discovered the bowerbird, which lives only there. When Jared came back in 1981, we began planning this trip.

What took you so long?
Western New Guinea has been a place apart. Because there's been a low-level separatist movement there, the government hasn't liked having people snooping around. It's very difficult to get permission to do full blown research there. We'd been close three or four times, but we never got the permission. The stars aligned in late 2005. The science people at the Indonesian Institute of Science said, `Yeah, OK, let's do it.' We ran around and found some money and put together a team very rapidly of Indonesian and international scientists. And it just happened.

How did you manage the logistics?
It was a leap of faith. We chartered a plane [in Jayapura], flew out to a little airstrip called Kwerba, a lowland jungle right next to the mountain range. We had to twist the arm of a group called Helimission, which provides helicopter support for missionaries. They agreed very kindly to take us to the top of the mountain and pick us up 15 days later.

How did you know where to land?
I had flown over the mountain range in a little Cessna and saw what looked to me like a dried lake bed, about [1,000 feet] across—a tiny spot in that big forest—and got a GPS coordinate for it. So I gave that to the helicopter pilot. It turned out to be a sphagnum bog, like you see in Maine. Some parts were more solid than others. Every minute it got more cloudy. If with wind wasn't blowing up one side it was blowing up the other. And it was very humid, so as the air rises it becomes clouds. This place was cloud city.

Sounds like fun.
Until we landed up at that little bog, nobody believed we were going to get there. It didn't seem possible that everything was going to work out. When the helicopter got up there, the mountains were covered with clouds. Thank God for GPS. The helicopter pilot was able to sort of play around the clouds and find his way in. There was only one place we could land. When he came to pick us up—same thing. We couldn't leave. Three times we went up into the clouds and had to come back because the pilot couldn't see anything. On the third try the pilot said, “I see a crack,” and we went into it, and for five minutes we were lost. My hands were gripping, I was sweating. He was one cool character. After about five minutes he radioed back to the base and said, “I'm going to have to go back, I can't get it.” And just as he turned, he saw an opening [in the clouds] and he ran for it and got in. And then the world opened up for us and we were OK.

How long were you up there?
Fifteen days—not nearly long enough. But those were the only days for the helicopter company. At dawn it would be beautiful and clear, and by 8:15 it was clouded in. By 10 o'clock it was raining. We worked day and night. The herpetologists were out from dusk to dawn. I was getting up early in the morning [to look at birds]. The butterfly person had 10 or 15 minutes a day. Butterflies really don't like rain and fog, so in a place like this, they wait for a little bit of sun and dance around. He had a miserable time. But he got four new species. The herpetologists also had a tough time. The frogs tend to be forest dwelling. They become active when it's misty and rainy, so if it doesn't rain at dusk or dawn, they sort of get bored and go back to sleep.

What did you do?
We tried to enumerate what's there. Every day I kept a list of what [birds] were there. I 'd walk the few trails we had, or wander around in the bushes, and record the bird songs. I also had a mist net—like an oversized badminton net. I would put it up where birds might be flying in the forest, and check it every hour. If there are birds in it, you put them in a bag, take them back to camp, measure them and let them go. Some birds are very secretive and don't make much noise. There's nothing more pleasurable to a field ornithologist than being out in the field and recording songs. When this new Honey Eater popped up at the edge of the bog, I could tell from 50 feet that it was a new species.

What's the best thing about this area?
There are so many endemic species in a little area. It's big enough for evolution to take place. That's the exciting take-home point. Jared had gotten indications of that, but now we know there are 39-plus species. Here's one of those special places on the globe that is untrailed, unroaded, unpeopled. There aren't many places like that anymore. We have wilderness areas, but there are roads in them, cattle in them, sometimes mining going on. This is an area that we really haven't trashed. These places are becoming precious, as benchmarks for what the world used to be like.

Are you planning to go back?
We're talking about a follow-up expedition, hopefully this year. There's a lot to do back there. I'm probably not going my self. I'll give some other scientist a chance to go.