Birds of Paradise
Witnessing them dance makes you re-evaluate not only what you thought of birds, but the limits of your earthly views.
The Birds of Paradise, are ‘39 of the most exquisitely specialized animals on earth’, the majority found in New Guinea’s cloud forests.
Cornell Lab scientist Dr. Ed Scholes, and National Geographic photojournalist Tim Laman, spent 8 patient years, over the course of 18 expeditions, recording footage of all 39 species in the bird-of-paradise family. This patience was overwhelmingly rewarded, capturing this evolutionary spectacle in totality for the first time ever.
(A newly discovered species since, the Vogelkop Superb, brings the species count to 40)
Unsurprisingly, their home is under threat, being cleared for resource extraction;commercial timber extraction, industrial-scale infrastructure expansion and permanent conversion for pulpwood and palm oil, which is extra criminal considering New Guinea is the most species-rich island on Earth and one of the world’s most important greenhouse gas reservoirs, storing vast amounts of carbon in their trees and soils.
EcoNusa an Indonesian non-profit, is attacking the problems in many different ways - one being the interesting EcoDefender program. They organize young Indonesians to support the sovereignty movement on equitable and sustainable natural resources management.
Out of this has also come the Papuan Young Scientist/IMP program, “This program seeks to produce students from public and private universities in Papua and West Papua to become reliable researchers and conduct studies on sustainable development in the Land of Papua. The participation of Papuan youth is expected to produce results which will later be used as the basis for policy formulation, as well as an innovation to achieve the sustainable development goals in Papua and West Papua.”
Many may reasonably criticize the unfairness of burdening youth with problems created by older generations, but the other side of the coin is, that at the very least, they should be given agency to start acting on what they wish their future to look like, and have opportunities such as the above, to prepare changes now.