Previously unknown animals found on remote mountain
AN AUSTRALIAN ecologist who placed cameras on an unexplored mountain range in Papua New Guinea has captured images of previously unknown mammals, including a new type of kangaroo.
Euan Ritchie said other scientists who had seen the pictures he captured in the Torricelli mountains were ‘‘pretty certain’’ the kangaroo-like creature was a species unknown to science.
The cameras also took pictures of a previously unknown mouselike creature that Ritchie has nicknamed Dumbo because of its large ears.
The findings are even more remarkable because the senior lecturer at Melbourne’s Deakin University funded the trip by raising A$20,000 (NZ$21,400) on an internet crowd-funding site.
He used the money to buy and place 40 motion-activated cameras in mountain range forests in Papua New Guinea’s remote northwest.
The expedition also captured the first pictures taken in the wild of the critically endangered weimang tree kangaroo – Papua New Guinea’s largest mammal, hunted mercilessly by jungle tribesmen.
‘‘I was astonished,’’ he said after he revealed his discoveries to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation yesterday. ‘‘This is something you dream about, going to frontiers so you can meet amazing animals in amazing habitats.
‘‘We certainly got an image of what we think is a new species ... think of a dog-sized wallaby, if you like. And there are also other things like bandicoots and rodents that don’t appear to be in any of the books.’’
He is planning to return to the Torricelli ranges early next year in the hope of capturing specimens of the species so they can be examined and confirmed as new finds.
‘‘To actually confirm that, of course, we will have to go back there . . . and catch these animals and get them in the hand and take measurements and DNA samples, so that’s for further down the track.
‘‘But there’s a whole range of species that are almost certain to be new to science,’’ said Ritchie.
He was informed by tribesmen that he and his companion, Jim Thomas, the head of a local conservation group, were the first white men to enter the remote regions of the Torricelli mountains where the cameras were placed.
Ritchie said the area was a global biodiversity hotspot. ‘‘So there’s a whole range, probably hundreds and hundreds of species, not just mammals, but the birds, insects, all sorts of species that are probably unknown to Western science.’’
Of the two rarer species photographed, Ritchie said he recorded the first camera trap images of the weimang ever.
‘‘That’s only the second time to my knowledge that the tenkile has been recorded. And to put it in perspective, particularly for the tenkile, there’s probably about five or six times as many giant pandas in the world as there is the tenkile tree kangaroo.
‘‘So to get multiple images now of the tenkile tree kangaroo is really, really significant and really exciting for us because it’s demonstration, particularly for the Tenkile Conservation Alliance, that their work with communities, the local people, is actually having an effect, a positive effect.
‘‘So the tenkile numbers are probably actually increasing and their long-term, you know, survival is looking quite good. So it’s really, really exciting to get those images.’’