Not to piggyback on the anthropological excitement over the fantastic Great Lakes discovery--described twice on the Rec List--but British scientists have found a previously undocumented virgin rainforest in southern Africa. Just using Google Earth(!), they narrowed down the high points on Africa's eastern seaboard, noticing a green patch of healthy looking forest in northern Mozambique. Then they took off! and made a discovery more typical of 1909 than 2009! The find is being hailed as a "lost Eden", all the more remarkable for being on the mainland of one of the continents.
Video link and more below!
Chronicled by the media in late 2008, the Royal Botanic Gardens scientists first detected the site at Mount Mabu in 2005. There's a new video (at least, new to me) via yahoo. http://gmy.news.yahoo.com/...
(Short and sweet video.)
At the Royal Botanic Gardens website, you can see some pictures of the new species documented. There are at least 10 new species, which include three kinds of butterfly and an adder (snake). But in addition, 7 Globally threatened birds also call Mount Mabu home. One of those birds is only known to live on a single other mountain.
The cross-border conservation project searches for "similarities between different patches of medium altitude rainforest."
"I used Google Earth to locate all the mountains over 1,500m that were closest to Mount Mulanje in Southern Malawi," -- Dr. Julian Bayliss
This is reminiscent of the "cloud forests" of the Southwest. Many people are surprised to find such places exist at the highest peaks of Arizona, New Mexico, and northern Mexico. Tiny mountain islands, located thousands of feet above what people think of as the southwest, are the domain of brilliant neon birds, rare flowers and to wolves and cougars, formerly.
Mount Mabu is similarly situated amidst southern Africa's more typical savannah. In conservation we call these mountain-meets-plains areas "edges", where wetter or colder zones meet drier and hotter areas. These are often biodiversity hubs, because many animals can gather more food and water at the edge of habitats than by covering a lot of ground in one type. And so far, there's been no sign of any previous commercial logging at Mabu.
Indeed, only 1/8th of the "new" forest has been explored.
Via the BBC: There's also a slideshow narrated by Johnathan Timberlake, the expedition leader.
I'm not a scientist by any means, and there's no way I can summarize this, but I'd like to leave a brief impression of the old-growth at Mabu's significance. Biodiversity is one of the most important new concepts for our generation, in my opinion. Biodiverse lands provide much of land-originating oxygen and air filtering through healthy forests, they pull water from the clouds which we drink and use to farm, and they provide other resources, including our drugs with which we treat cancer, headaches and heart problems. Three of the most biodiverse nations would be Brasil, Indonesia and--somewhat off most people's radar--Madagascar. But many larger nations like the U.S., Mexico and India contain relatively exceptional biodiversity. But relative is sometimes a poor measure, as you can see below.
Let's talk about animals. As I commented this morning, Woodland Caribou actually ranged into New England, the Great Lakes and still (one herd remaining) into Washington and Idaho in modern times. (The paleo-Indians at today's Great Lakes discovery site were Woodland Caribou hunters.) It's only through the process shown on this map, coupled with development, that the caribou's disappeared. Over time, forests will regrow, but any animals (megafauna in particular, including the rapidly diminishing apes in Africa) dependent on standing forest will vanish for the quarter-century or century that that forest is gone... and as they lose access to farther reaches, the population diminishes, and often does not expand back when the forest does. This has also happened with the American wolf, bears, and other megafauna. Of course, the buffalo was deliberately targeted for ecocide, but it ranged into Georgia in the 1700s, and as far west as Washington--it was not restricted to the Plains and Rockies. Another truth your teacher didn't tell you.
The global loss of about 8,000 species annually is due to fragmentation in a large way. In Oregon and Washington's forests, logging roads, clear-cuts and highways make a swiss cheese effect (use teh google to scroll over the townless, western parts of the state that are the "wilderness"/biodiversity hotspot of the lower 48).
And many of the most pristine, biodiversity hotspots are not on the mainland, but rather small islands in the Pacific such as New Caledonia. (French territory) Small island do not provide much in the way of earth's breathe-ability or seeding the mainland. And can be devastated easily by invasive weeds, introduced animals like cats (which also devastate native songbird populations in the lower 48, rest assured) or goats, or even a virus. To find a hotspot in the 21st century's shrinking planet is sort of a shock.
And thus, Mabu is truly exceptional.
I would like to see to it that when Mount Mabu is protected officially by the government of Mozambique, it's not in exchange for opening some 20-40% of the land for clear-cutting or mining. Brazil's doing this currently, (and Indonesia would be improving by doing this) by setting aside the most vast preserves imaginable, while astonishing swaths of the Amazon and eastern forests are being turned into soy for McDonald's beef and sugar cane for ethanol.