Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
into a lake again! A problem if helicopter comes when bog is a lake! Tons of rain falling and
trails are appalling.” The weather was indeed getting worse, but the discoveries kept coming,
right up until the last day of the expedition.
There remained a small problem—the ability of the helicopter to fetch them safely. Bruce's
notes summed it up with his usual gusto: “7 Dec. Heli arrives at 4 PM (was supposed to arrive
at dawn!). We take 45 minutes to get out with enveloping cloud stopping our escape. Three
tries before we actually get out of the cloud and to the clear where we can see our way down
the mountain—very frightening . . . Arrive at Kwerba at dusk. The others must spend night
on the mountain while we luxuriate in warmth and washing in the stream with soap!”
Bruce's expedition could take pride in its place in the annals of scientific exploration. But the
Foja expedition had missed the golden age of natural history. That period reached its apogee
in England about the middle of the nineteenth century. Had Bruce's group steamed up the
Thames in 1837, they would have known triumph: handshakes all around from Darwin, Wal-
lace, Huxley, and the officers of the Royal Society, perhaps even knighthood. Instead, the
expedition's leader was met by his family and a faithful golden retriever. Bruce immediately
returned to his desk at Conservation International. Proposals needed writing, spreadsheets
checked, and the bureaucratic machinery jump-started after his hiatus.
Weeks after the expedition's return, Conservation International's public relations depart-
ment issued a press release about the team's successes under this tantalizing headline:
“Scientists Uncover Biodiversity Trove in a 'Lost World' in Western New Guinea.”
“I was as close to the Garden of Eden as you're going to find on Earth,” Bruce remarked.
And with that sound bite, for about a fortnight, Bruce Beehler may have been the world's
most famous field biologist or, thanks to his dramatic phrasing, the most quoted. His refer-
ence to Eden echoed through the popular press. Requests for interviews poured in. Beehler
obliged and offered more statements ripe with imagery: “There was not a single trail, no sign
of civilization, no sign of even local communities ever having been there.”
Most reporters didn't care about Beehler's spectacular faunal finds; a new honeyeater
meant little to them. It was his words that painted a serene vision, one that offered a different,
uplifting message, as high and rare as the Fojas. In contrast to the daily stream of mayhem
in Iraq and Afghanistan, they could report that an Eden still exists on Earth. Bruce avoided
mentioning, though, that what passes for paradise to a biologist is typically a miserably wet
place for most mortals. Better to stick with the sound bites.
What, in retrospect, can the Beehler expedition tell us about rarity and abundance? One
of the first insights involves the distinction between geographic rarity and population rarity.
Most of the endemic species of the Foja Mountains exhibit geographic rarity—tiny global
