Lorentz National Park in Indonesia: Google doodle on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site


Devdiscourse News Desk | Jakarta | Updated: 04-12-2019 00:38 IST | Created: 04-12-2019 00:38 IST
Lorentz National Park in Indonesia: Google doodle on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site
Lorentz National Park contains many unmapped and unexplored areas, and is certain to contain many species of plants and animals as yet unknown to Western science. Image Credit: Google doodle
  • Country:
  • Indonesia

Google today, on December 4, celebrates the anniversary of Lorentz National Park in Indonesia with a stunning doodle. Formerly known as Irian Jaya, this is the largest national park in South-East Asia.

Lorentz National Park was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999. This massive nature sanctuary, spanning over 9,600 square miles (about 24,864 square kilometers) is located in the Papua province, right at the intersection of two colliding continental plates.

The Lorentz National Park contains several ecosystems, including grasslands, swamps, ocean beaches, rainforests, and alpine mountains topped by rare tropical glaciers. Its most famous mountain, Puncak Jaya, is the tallest peak in South-East Asia. It is considered as one of the most ecologically diverse national parks in the world. It is the only nature reserve in the Asia-Pacific region to contain a full altitudinal array of ecosystems ranging through marine areas, mangroves, tidal and freshwater swamp forest, lowland and montane rainforest, alpine tundra, and equatorial glaciers. At 4884 meters, Puncak Jaya (formerly Carstensz Pyramid) is the tallest mountain between the Himalayas and the Andes.

Lorentz National Park contains many unmapped and unexplored areas, and is certain to contain many species of plants and animals as yet unknown to Western science. Local communities' ethnobotanical and ethnozoological knowledge of the Lorentz biota is also very poorly documented. The park is named for Hendrikus Albertus Lorentz, a Dutch explorer who passed through the area on his 1909–10 expedition.

It has 630 documented species of bird (around 95 percent of the total number of bird species in Papua) and 123 mammalian species. Birds include two species of cassowary, 31 dove and pigeon species, 500 species of cockatoo, 60 species of kingfisher and 145 species of sunbird. The mammal species include the long-beaked echidna, short-beaked echidna, and four species of cuscus as well as wallabies, quolls and tree-kangaroos. Endemic to the Sudirman Range is the dingiso, a tree-kangaroo species only discovered in 1995. The park was established in 1997.

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