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Showing posts with label New Guinea. Show all posts
Spirit Hotspot
Clan Elder Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden Melanesian-Way Conservation New Guinea Spirit Hotspot

Chairman Andrew McAulay reflects on seventy years of KFBG, shaped by the sacred presence of Kwun Yum Shan, where Nature and spirit dance together

June 30, 2026 0
This article was first published in the March/April edition of the magazine 'Resurgence & Ecologist'.

An elder from the highlands of New Guinea once told me that while his people engage with the outside world on its terms, when it comes to biodiversity conservation the real reason they wish to protect ‘hotspots’ is because of the ‘other beings’ who live there. This reference to the overriding significance of the spiritual dimension of Nature can be found throughout the Indigenous world. The healing function of sacred natural places has always been recognised within traditional cultures. Such sites played a fundamental role in the lives of all our ancestors. While the function of such places may not be easy to measure, they can easily be ‘felt’ and their influence identified in myriad external forms – by the discerning soul.

It was with this understanding that I became intrigued with a particular mountain in my birthplace, Hong Kong. Rising to nearly 600 metres, Kwun Yum Shan lies within the grounds of Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden (KFBG), a 145-hectare site established in 1956 by the Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association (KAAA) to help resettle refugees following the civil war in China.

I used to visit the mountain regularly as a child with my great-uncle Horace, one of the founders of the KAAA, but lost touch with it after being sent to boarding school in England at the age of eight. By the early 1990s I was living in a meditation centre in the US, with no desire to return to Hong Kong. When the immigration authorities refused to renew my stay, however, I found myself back home, twiddling my thumbs and looking for a way to be of service. The timing was fortuitous. Consultants had just been hired to establish a new direction for KFBG, providing an opportunity for me to reacquaint myself with the mountain. I agreed to help reinvent the organisation as a centre for Nature conservation and education and, as its first executive director, oversaw the development of programmes spanning agroecology, forest restoration, wildlife rescue and biodiversity research and conservation, in both Hong Kong and South China.

Kwun Yum Shan is named after the Chinese Goddess of Love and Compassion Kwun Yum (Guan Yin in Mandarin). Located in the New Territories on the slopes of Tai Mo Shan, Hong Kong’s highest mountain, facing north towards mainland China and straddling the boundary between two distinct valleys, the summit is marked by several round stone altars dating back more than a thousand years. More recently, a statue of the goddess was installed, featuring an array of symbols both scientific and spiritual. Around the time of KFBG’s 50th anniversary in 2006, we chose to renovate the summit, replacing the former car park with a garden for quiet contemplation, with Kwun Yum moved to a position of prominence.

Geologically, the mountain owes its form to a predominance of quartz, which enabled it to withstand the erosion of its surroundings, remnants of a vast ancient volcanic crater. Its interior is shaped like a honeycomb, allowing air entering through its base to warm as it rises towards ‘hot pot’ vents at the summit, where it emerges as what is known locally as ‘the dragon’s breath’. On cold, damp days the summit can feel like a steam bath, transporting visitors into another realm entirely, though even on ordinary days the site carries a magical aura. According to visiting Indigenous teachers, this is one of Earth’s sacred natural sites, part of a network of places that are energetically connected and primarily responsible for the health of the planet and all her beings. Should the power of such a place become dormant, it can be revitalised and sustained by being ‘fed’ with the presence and reverence of those who visit the site with conscious intention.

It seems no coincidence to me that this historic place of pilgrimage, where ancestors once prayed for health and wellbeing, became the base for a programme that uplifted and empowered hundreds of thousands of impoverished people in Hong Kong’s rapidly expanding post-war population. At the time, the rationale was that the features of the mountain – its range of altitudes, slope directions and microclimates – lent themselves to agricultural and horticultural research. Those same qualities continue to shape its present role, including as a pool for the bioregion’s plants, and a home for a rich diversity of fauna, some rare and endemic. Or might it be said that the special energy of this place manifested a programme characterised by love for humans, a love that has since been extended to all beings, including the ‘other beings’ nourished by the holistic dimensions of our educational work? Is the mountain doing the bidding of those of us who work here, or could it be the other way around?

Certainly my own life seems deeply entwined with this place. Significant moments and inner shifts are often mirrored by on-site occurrences. Synchronistic changes in weather patterns and the timely appearances and unusual behaviour of animals are just some of the ways in which the mountain seems to be forever speaking to a deeper part of me. At the precise time that I discovered breathwork as part of a healing journey from cancer, archaeologists were conducting a discreet investigation of the summit’s central altar when it suddenly caved in, opening a new channel of airflow. As the mountain began to breathe more freely, I trained as a facilitator and began offering breathwork ceremonies as part of what became the Kadoorie Earth Programme, created to encourage a shift in the way we think, feel and relate.

Over the decades, the work at KFBG has continued to unfold in response to this subtle guidance. From regenerative farming and forest restoration to science, arts, education and programmes for adults and school groups of all ages, alongside the evolving Earth Programme, each initiative seeks to cultivate direct experience of the mysterious and awesome reality of our true, interconnected nature. Mindfulness, breathwork, tea ceremony, Nature vigils and other contemplative practices help shift awareness, so that thoughts, words and actions can spring from the source of life and not from the limited ideas of the world and ourselves.

This year we are celebrating the 70th anniversary of this remarkable achievement. We are honouring our founders, Horace and Lawrence Kadoorie, along with all those staff and partners who have lit the way for us. With immense gratitude and love for all beings, we are eagerly hosting our friends and continuing to develop our community.

Here in Hong Kong, we feel fortunate to live in one of the safer parts of our planet, even as we remain mindful that the effects of the polycrisis will eventually touch us all. I can only hope and pray that one of those effects will be a loosening of the cycles of fear and desire that sustain destructive behaviour, allowing us to recognise our interdependence and to reforge the bonds that enabled humans to live with a more integrated and enamoured worldview.

Grounding and inspiring that worldview are Earth’s sacred natural places. It has been my honour to find myself in relationship with one such place, and to be called upon to help steward it back into its full potential, in harmony with humanity. Stay tuned as Kwun Yum’s mission continues to unfold through all of us blessed to be associated with her magical mountain. 

Andrew McAulay is the Chairman of Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden and the author of Little Fish, an illustrated book inspired by the mountain Kwun Yum Shan. 
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New Guinea
endemic species New Guinea

“Rubbish Bird,” the Hooded Pitohui

January 27, 2026 0
Known locally in parts of Papua New Guinea as the “Rubbish Bird,” the Hooded Pitohui is considered poisonous and inedible, a reputation backed by science.

In 1992, according to National Geographic, scientist John Dumbacher and his collaborators made the groundbreaking discovery of the bird’s toxicity while researching Birds of Paradise in PNG.

The Hooded Pitohui is the most toxic of the six pitohui species. Its skin and feathers contain batrachotoxin, the same powerful toxin found in certain South American poison dart frogs. Scientists believe the toxin comes from the bird’s diet, particularly the toxic Choresine beetle, which it consumes while foraging for fruits and seeds.

Batrachotoxin is more lethal than cyanide, capable of irritating nerves, causing paralysis and even leading to death in both humans and animals. Like many poisonous species, the Hooded Pitohui uses its bright colouring and strong odour as a warning to predators.
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New Guinea Nature
dingo endemic species New Guinea New Guinea Nature

New Guinea's mysterious singing dogs found again in the wild

November 02, 2023 0

 DNA reveals highland wild dogs are almost identical to their captive cousins


Two highland wild dogs photographed near Grasberg Mine on western New GuineaANANG DIANTO

31 AUG 2020 BY MICHAEL PRICE


The haunting, plaintive wail of New Guinean singing dogs once resounded throughout the island's lush mountains and valleys. Today, with the wild population thought to have gone extinct decades ago, the songs of these secretive canines—close cousins of the Australian dingo—are heard only by zoogoers. But a new study suggests wild dogs living near a gold mine in New Guinea's highlands are in fact the same animals. If confirmed, the wild dogs could help save New Guinean singing dogs around the world.


It's not clear exactly when New Guinean singing dogs or their forebears arrived on the large Indonesian island north of Australia. The earliest evidence of dingoes down under dates to about 3500 years ago, and many archaeologists think the tan, short-haired, singing dogs—which are about the size of a border collie—showed up on New Guinea around the same time, possibly brought over by boat.


Today, between 200 and 300 New Guinean singing dogs live in zoos and sanctuaries around the world, but there hasn't been a confirmed sighting in the wild since the 1970s, when human development rapidly expanded into their habitat. Still, locals have claimed for years that they've occasionally heard the dogs' wailing.


Enter the highland wild dog, an equally mysterious canine known only from anecdotal observations and two photographs taken in 1989 and 2012. To learn more about these canines, zoologist James McIntyre led a field expedition to the highlands of Papua on the island's western half near one of the largest gold and copper mines in the world, Grasberg Mine. On that expedition, McIntyre and colleagues, including scientists from the University of Papua, photographed and collected fecal samples from 15 highland wild dogs—which looked, acted, and howled an awful lot like New Guinean singing dogs. Two years later, the researchers managed to trap and collect blood samples from three of the animals.


The scientists sequenced the genomes of the three dogs and compared their nuclear DNA to that of 16 captive New Guinean singing dogs, 25 dingoes, and more than 1000 dogs from 161 other breeds. The highland wild dogs and New Guinean singing dogs have nearly identical genetic profiles, they report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Both are also closely related to dingoes, and slightly more distantly to other dogs of East Asian origin like the chow chow, Akita, and shiba inu.


The New Guinean singing dogs' genome has degraded because of inbreeding, and the highland wild dogs' genome contains bits from local village dogs, but they are essentially the same dog, explains study co-author Elaine Ostrander, a geneticist at the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute.


That would make them "a fantastic population for conservation biology," she says. Plagued by years of inbreeding, researchers fear captive singing dogs could soon have trouble reproducing. If they could be bred with these highland dogs, it could preserve the population and reintroduce some of the genetic diversity that's been lost over years of captivity. It's also possible, she adds, that further study of the dogs' genomes could reveal how—and why—the dogs maintain a vocal repertoire that is "like nothing else we've heard in nature."


Peter Dwyer, a zoologist at the University of Melbourne, says the work is a "very useful" study for ongoing work disentangling the relationships between dogs in New Guinea. But he cautions more evidence would be needed to conclude that New Guinea singing dogs represent a unique, archaic population of dogs, distinct from other dogs on the island. Rather, Dwyer says his own work suggests the singing dogs may be descendants of village dogs, some of which share many of the characteristics of the highland wild dogs living near the Grasberg mine.


*Correction, 1 September, 10:28 a.m.: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the views of Peter Dwyer.


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West Papua
Benny Wenda deforestation New Guinea Oil Palm Plantation Rainforest West Papua

Benny Wenda: DEFORESTATION IN WEST PAPUA: FROM ECOCIDE PLUS ETHNOCIDE TO GENOCIDE

April 04, 2023 0

West Papua lost 748,640 hectares (1.85 million acres), or 2% of its old-growth forest, between 2001 and 2019, according to the study published in the journal Biological Conservation. This was largely due to the growth of plantations, primarily oil palms, and the government’s push for infrastructure development in the region. Oil palm and pulpwood plantations accounted for 208,223 hectares (514,500 acres) of the deforestation during those periods, or 28% of total deforestation. A study, by the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI) Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia, an NGO, attributes 22,009 hectares (54,400 acres) of forest loss between 2001 and 2019 due to the construction of Trans-Papua Highway. The Road passes nearby at least seven conservation zones, including Lorentz National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, causing the loss of the function of protected areas as the support system of their surrounding ecosystems. It notes that 22% of this deforestation in an area of 4,906 hectares (12,100 acres), occurred in protected conservation zones. According to spatial analysis by the NGO Auriga Nusantara, Lorentz lost 7,644 hectares (18,888 acres) of forests in the past two decades, with an increasing deforestation rate.

A 202-km (126-mi) stretch of the highway that’s built through the national park has devastated parts of the protected area. Among the species living in the national park is the endangered dingiso tree-kangaroo (Dendrolagus mbaiso).

In July 2021, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Fuzhou, China urged the Indonesian government to shut down constructing the Trans Papua Road in West Papua. The call released after the organisation highlighted the highway construction damaged the flora and fauna ecosystem in Lorentz National Park. Extraction industries, particularly palm oil plantations and mining projects remain a major threat to indigenous peoples and the ecosystem in West Papua.

The environmental destruction has occurred through the economic interests of both Indonesia and foreign companies. Besides losing natives land, the presence of these companies are causing negative outcomes, such as flooding and landslides. Many Papuans are threatened with huge tracts of land that have been granted as concession to timber companies. These companies were established in the early 1980s, and increased rapidly in palm oil production sites during the recent years, which is now considered a major cause of deforestation, and linked to the human rights concern affecting indigenous Papuans living nearby plantations.

The presence of these companies remains the biggest threat to primary rainforests in West Papua, and thus to West Papua’s ability to thrive and continue their culture and way of life, that is to determine their own destiny. As mentioned previously, destroying a people’s physical environment is a form of at least cultural genocide and carries a very real threat of physical genocide as well.











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seafarers
Melanesia Micronesia New Guinea Papua New Guinea Polynesia sailors seafarers

Early seafarers in the Pacific managed to populate some of the most remote and isolated islands in the world

May 19, 2022 0

 ByAlison Bosman

Earth.com staff writer


Early seafarers in the Pacific managed to populate some of the most remote and isolated islands in the world. This achievement, undertaken in open canoes without modern navigation technology, is one of the greatest feats of migration in human history. These adventurers eventually populated habitable islands in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia and left us to wonder exactly how it all happened.

A new study by researchers from the Australian National University (ANU), the University of New South Wales and the University of Papua New Guinea has now shed additional light on how the Lapita peoples may have used Papua New Guinea as a springboard for traveling to the Pacific islands. The term “Lapita” refers to an ancient Pacific culture with genetic origins in Southeast Asia, more specifically in what is today Taiwan and the Philippines. These seafaring people are believed by archaeologists to be the common ancestors of the contemporary cultures of the Melanesian, Micronesian and Polynesian islands.

The early settlers of these islands left behind few clues for scientists to reconstruct their journeys – these include clearly related languages on widely scattered island groups, sweet potatoes, stone tools and, in a few places, great stone statues of human figures. But they did leave some very distinctive ceramic ware. It was the discovery of just such a sherd of beautifully decorated Lapita pottery on Brooker Island, in 2017, that led ANU researcher Dr Ben Shaw to initiate further study on this island. 

“Lapita cultural groups were the first people to reach the remote Pacific islands such as Vanuatu, around 3,000 years ago. But in Papua New Guinea where people have lived for at least 50,000 years, the timing and extent of Lapita dispersals are poorly understood,” Dr Shaw said. “For a long time, it was thought Lapita groups avoided most of Papua New Guinea because people were already living there.” Although fragments of the unique pottery have been found on mainland Papua New Guinea, archaeologists believed the Lapita people never settled in this area.

Excavations at Brooker Island extended back through the remnants of human habitation to a time of around 4,000 years ago. The findings, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution show the presence of characteristic Lapita pottery with intricate dentate stamp decorations down to a time of around 3,000 years ago. 

“We found lots of Lapita pottery, a range of stone tools and evidence for shaping of obsidian [volcanic glass] into sharp blades,” Dr Shaw said. 

These finds are fairly typical of other Lapita archaeological sites in archipelagos in the region. However, on Brooker Island the excavation went below this level and revealed a complete change in artefacts, behavior and remains. 

“As we dug deeper, we reached an even earlier cultural layer before the introduction of pottery. What amazed us was the amount of mammal bone we recovered, some of which could be positively identified as pig and dog. These animals were introduced to New Guinea by Lapita and were associated with the use of turtle shell to make tools,” explained Dr Shaw. 

The findings provide the earliest evidence for Lapita-introduced animals, turtle bone technology and repeated obsidian import in southern New Guinea 3,480–3,060 years ago. This timing is synchronous with the establishment of the earliest known Lapita settlements, some 700 km away.

The researchers inferred from these findings that Lapita cultural groups introduced pottery to the site around 3,000 years ago. They found it more difficult to explain the presence of the other, older artefacts in the lower layers, however. Either the early inhabitants were Lapita people who were only temporarily based at the site and did not have time to make pottery before they moved off somewhere else, or the inhabitants were Papuans who had acquired domesticated pigs and dogs from Lapita groups at other island sites (Papuan cultures are not associated with the use of pottery). 

What is certain is that the site gives evidence that interactions between the Lapita people and the Indigenous Papuans took place. This is supported by genetic analysis of several Lapita skeletal remains from other archaeological sites that identifies the presence of an admixture of Papuan genes.

Lapita culture can thus be seen as a complex mixture of cultural elements introduced from Southeast Asia and from long-established cultures in Papua New Guinea. The evidence points to a migration of Lapita people, first through the inhabited landscapes of Southeast Asia and then further southwards and eastwards to populate the hitherto uninhabited islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. The site at Brooker Island gives evidence of Papua-Lapita interactions at the frontier of expansion into these new ecosystems.  

According to Dr Shaw, later Lapita dispersals through Papua New Guinea, and interactions with Indigenous populations profoundly influenced the region as a global centre of cultural and linguistic diversity. 

“It is one of the greatest migrations in human history and finally we have evidence to help explain why the migration might have occurred and why it took place when it did,” he said. 

“We had no indication this would be a site of significance, and a lot of the time we were flying blind with the areas we surveyed and when looking for archaeological sites, so it is very much like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.” 
—

By Alison Bosman, Earth.com Staff Writer
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New Guinea
deforestation New Guinea

Deforestation from road expansion jeopardizes ecosystems in Indonesian New Guinea

September 30, 2021 0
Scientists use satellite data to project rate

JULIE MOLLINS 
@jmollins
Tuesday, 28 Sep 2021

Recently discovered bird-of-paradise. Photo Credit: Tim Laman, Birds of Paradise Project

The vast forests of the world’s largest tropical island are populated by exotic birds of paradise, kingfishers, parrots, raptors and pigeons – these species representing just a handful of almost 750 that have so far been identified.

Yet New Guinea – notable for unique and biodiverse flora and fauna attributed to its turbulent geological history and range of tropical habitats from sea level to high elevation mountain ranges – faces multiple threats from deforestation.

Since colonial times, the island has been divided – in the west, the provinces of West Papua and Papua make up Indonesian New Guinea, and in the east it is the independent country of Papua New Guinea. Until relatively recent times, the environmental disruptions faced by Indigenous Peoples and local communities were mostly localized.

But since 2010, the situation has been rapidly changing, according to David Gaveau, a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature Oil Palm Task Force, who worked with a team of Indonesian and international scientists to use satellite imagery to measure forest loss between 2001 and 2019, demonstrating close ties between expansion of the Trans-Papua Highway – a 4,000 km national investment project – the expansion of oil palm plantations and deforestation.

Forest loss in Indonesian New Guinea: Trends, drivers and outlook
“Positive correlations between Trans-Papua Highway construction and plantation expansion indicate these are linked processes,” said Gaveau. “Plantations and roads expanded rapidly after 2011, particularly in Papua province. While overall forest losses remain limited, our model shows how new roads may lead to more extensive deforestation.  Some 4.5 million hectares of forest will be cleared by 2036 if Papua and West Papua follow similar patterns observed in Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.”

With less land available elsewhere in the country, agro-industries are increasingly investing in the development of large monoculture plantations for palm oil, and pulp and paper production, he said, adding that extensive road construction supports related land development, as well as mining.

The scientists used satellite data to examine the patterns and relationships of deforestation, road development and plantation expansion from 2001 to 2019, then developed a model to predict future deforestation.

The data are summarized in the journal of Biological Conservation and presented interactively in the Nusantara Atlas.

“We believe that the role of civil society to monitor, alert and report on deforestation and land conversion in Papua and West Papua should be strengthened to ensure what happens on the ground is fair, transparent and democratic,” Gaveau said.

“Although roads can bring benefits to previously remote and neglected communities, many observers are concerned that big commercial interests dominate over local needs across the region,” he added. “They appear to facilitate access by concession owners to their oil palm or mining concessions and benefit their subsequent extractive industries with consequent harm to forests, to Indigenous Peoples and to biodiversity.”

To reach their findings, the scientists calibrated six models using forest loss observed between 2010 and 2018 as the response variable. They generated yearly deforestation risk maps, simulating the spatial occurrence of forest loss over an 18-year time frame to 2036.

Using two scenarios – one which estimated the speed of forest loss as the percentage of forest loss observed between 2010 and 2018 in Indonesian New Guinea, relative to the total amount of forest left. The other scenario estimated forest loss as the percentage of forest loss based on what was observed in Indonesian Borneo between 2001 and 2018.

Aerial view over highway cutting through rainforest in Papua Province. Photo credit: Ulet Ifansasti for Greenpeace
“Although our research focused on land-cover change, this is only one aspect of the threats to biodiversity in the area,” said co-author Douglas Sheil, who is also a member of the IUCN task force, which investigates the sustainability of palm oil, and a professor at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands.

“New roads do not only increase the risk of deforestation, but they also increase access for other activities such as hunting, potentially impacting wildlife,” he added. “But what I would emphasize — as particularly important and exciting in Indonesian New Guinea — is how the aspirations of local communities and conservation often align. In many instances people venerate, guard and protect nature as an integral part of their culture. If we work closely with these people we can develop plans that have local support, and bring many wider benefits both in terms of development and conservation. ”

Overall, less forest loss has occurred in Indonesian New Guinea than in the rest of Indonesia, with only 2 percent of old growth forests cleared from 2001 to 2019, mostly due to plantation expansion, roads, timber cutting, fires, shifting agriculture, artisanal mining and landslides, according to the report.

“Policies overseeing land use decisions should carefully weigh the trade-offs in the region and acknowledge the significant local and international role these forests play economically and environmentally,” Gaveau said.
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