The biodiversity, culture and landscape of Papua Island have long inspired leading scientists, from Alfred Russel Wallace to Jared Diamond. Papua is the largest island in the tropics and the second largest in the world after Greenland, which is what makes this island have a variety of species living on it.

Papua is the island with the greatest biodiversity in the world. A publication by 99 experts who researched the flora and fauna of Papua and published it in Nature magazine in 2020 stated that the second largest island in Indonesia has 13,634 plant species. This number is 2,000 times the type of flora found in Madagascar, the island with the second highest plant diversity in the world.

Krisma Lekitoo, Researcher at the Research Center for Plant Conservation, Botanical Gardens and Forestry, the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency known as BRIN, said that West Papua is one of Indonesia’s tropical regions, which is located in the western part of New Guinea Island and has the highest diversity of flora in the world.

There are 32 tectonic plates on the island of Papua (New Guinea), where each plate has special characteristics that influence the type of flora that grows on it. This island has the peak of Jaya Wijaya which rises to 4,884 meters above sea level, mountain forests, lowland forests, grasslands, and mangrove forests on the coast. The high diversity of flora is in line with the high level of endemism, namely 1,030 species or around 68 percent.

Just call it sago. Even though it grows outside Papua, this plant has been the staple food of the Papuan people for 50,000 years. In fact, for many tribes in Papua, sago is not only a staple food, but also a set of emics, a source of knowledge and a religious system.

Apart from sago, there is also red fruit or Pandanus conoideus, a fruit endemic to Papua which is rich in antioxidants. There is also Areca unipa, a type of areca nut that was only discovered in 2014 and is only found in Papua. And there is also a type of orchid, Bulpophyllum wiratnoi, which was just discovered in 2018 in the lowland rainforest of Sorong.

BRIN has mapped the traditional and hereditary use of flora by 276 tribes in Papua, through ethnobotanical studies in several areas. Based on their records, there are 255 types for food, 115 types for rituals, 39 types for boat making materials, 25 types for malaria medicine, and 57 types for diarrhea medicine.

Unfortunately, the rich flora is only a momentary nostalgia. “Currently, the IUCN records at least 470 types of flora as threatened with extinction, one species has been declared extinct, namely Manilkara napali van Royen,” said Krisma Lekitoo, researcher at the Research Center for Plant Conservation, Botanical Gardens and Forestry, BRIN.

One cause is deforestation. Even though the rate of deforestation continues to fall, the area of forest lost remains large. Based on Auriga’s study, over the last two decades, Papua’s forest cover shrank by 663,443 hectares, 71% of which occurred in 2011-2019. Or on average, every year Papua loses 34,918 hectares of forest. An area equivalent to half the area of the city of Jakarta.

Currently, conservation has begun to be carried out with the existence of botanical gardens and arboretums. However, the collection of species is still very small compared to the number of species that need to be saved. Moreover, according to Professor of the Faculty of Forestry, University of Papua, Agustinus Murdjoko, the herbarium collection of Papuasian flora is still limited.

There are several causes, said Murdjoko. Such as limited accessibility and expedition costs, the number and quality of researchers is still small, especially taxonomists. In the future, Murdjoko hopes that there will be cooperation between academics, BRIN and other parties to save the rich flora of West Papua.

Despite the influence of damage by human factors, Papua Island remains a ‘natural laboratory’ of botanical evolution and unparalleled endemism. Researchers found 68 percent of plants on this island that are not found anywhere else.

How did this happen?

Scientists say it began with the island’s complex geological formation, with mountain ranges forming towering peaks that rival Europe’s Alps.

With a glacial height of 4,884 meters above sea level, Puncak Jaya is the highest mountain on Papua Island, stretching to the coastline creating a habitat of mangroves, lowland forests and mountain rainforests and grasslands.

In terms of vulnerability due to geographical isolation, Papua’s diversity and endemism are also threatened because in several cases certain plant species are found that can only be found in certain narrow habitat areas.

This rarity and limited distribution makes these endemic species vulnerable to being wiped out with just one felling or clearing of land for large-scale plantations, such as oil palm.

Tiberius Jimbo, one of the study authors and a plant biologist from the Papua New Guinea Forest Research Institute, told Mongabay that he has identified more than 1,000 plant species endemic to Papua that qualify for inclusion on the IUCN Red List.

Opening areas can also start from opening roads. In 2019, Campbell and his colleagues tried to analyze plans to build a 6,300 km road network in Papua aimed at connecting remote communities. As a result, the team concluded that building this road could destroy most of the primary forest.