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Acknowledgments

THE DEVELOPMENT of The Ecology of Papua has a long and complex history. The genesis of the Ecology of Indonesia series dates from 1981, when the Sumatra volume was written under the Government of Indonesia/United Nations Development Program Project INS/78/056 entitled Education and Training in Environment and Resources, executed by the World Bank with a subcontract to Dalhousie University. This was followed by a project entitled Environmental Management and Development in Indonesia (EMDI), financed by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). This effort led to the concept of a national series, including a volume on Papua. Unfortunately, the original plan to prepare the Papua (then Irian Jaya) volume in the early 1990s faced a variety of problems, and it was never completed.

Over the long gestation period of this work, during which time the other seven volumes were completed (and two volumes already revised), there have been a series of editors for the Papua volume. Because of a number of insurmountable hurdles, the book project never really moved ahead until 2004, at which point BP (British Petroleum), through its Tangguh Project initiative, agreed to provide a grant to support the book in its latest incarnation as an edited volume. We here recognize BP’s Tangguh partners and their support of the project through BP: KG Berau Petroleum Ltd., Nippon Oil Exploration (Berau) Ltd., MI Berau BV, BP Berau Ltd., BP Wiriagar Ltd., BP Muturi Holding BV, KG Wiriagar Petroleum Ltd., CNOOC Wiriagar Overseas Ltd., Indonesia Natural Gas Resources Muturi, Inc., and CNOOC Muturi Ltd. The BP grant, as well as a grant from CI to Harvard University, permitted the contracting of AJM to serve as managing editor for the project (2004–2006). We thank Karla Boreri Dutton, Lidia Ahmad, Jalal, Erwin Maryoto, and the entire BP Tangguh Project Environmental Team for being instrumental in fostering this partnership with BP.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, through its generous funding of CI’s Melanesia Center for Biodiversity Conservation, provided the impetus for completing this demanding project. We are deeply grateful for its support.

With this support from the Moore Foundation and BP, the work began in earnest, resulting in written contributions from eighty-six authors, and with additional technical assistance from Conservation International–Indonesia, especially Dr. Yance de Fretes, a long-term student of the biodiversity of Papua.

We thank Tony Whitten for his genius in pulling together the concept for this important book series. We thank also Kathy MacKinnon, who also was central to the series. We thank Ron Petocz for all the background bibliographic research he conducted on Papua, which today remains a remarkable achievement. The advisory team for the book, which included Whitten, as well as Gerald Allen, Allen Allison, Chris Ballard, BMB, Jim Cannon, Yance de Fretes, Geoff Hope, Robert Johns, J. R. Mansoben, Scott Miller, Dan Polhemus, and Wayne Takeuchi, provided invaluable thinking on the composition and vision for the work. As a group we decided to make it an expert-chapters book rather than a synthesis. We hope readers approve of this choice.

We are greatly indebted to the nearly ninety text contributors, without whose voluntary writing efforts we would have no book. When the final deadline came, every author did submit the required piece, and many of them are superlative contributions to science. Bravo to them! We also thank those who contributed photographs. We especially thank Gerald Allen, J. Burke Burnett, Michael P. Moore, and Stephen J. Richards, who provided a large share of the color photographs.

We offer thanks to the staff of Conservation International in Jakarta and Jayapura who helped us in a variety of ways with this immense project. Thanks to Dr. Jatna Supriatna, CI–Indonesia’s Regional Director, for his leadership on this initiative. We also especially note the assistance of Budi Iraningrum with respect to her work on literature research for the project, Hendi Sumantri with maps for the book, Tommy Wakum for gathering information from government agencies in Papua, as well as Scott Frazier. CI’s Center for Environmental Leadership in Business made possible the relationship with BP, and for this we thank Glenn Prickett, Assheton Carter, and Marielle Carter.

We thank the Harvard University Herbaria, especially Bob Cook and Frances Maguire, for helping to arrange a postdoctoral appointment for AJM during the period that this book was pulled together. We also thank Rose Balan, Donna Barrett, Anne Marie Countie, Deidre Fogg, Ingrid McDonough, Karen Pinto, Chris Preheim, and Lisa Toste for administrative and technical support. AJM would also like to express thanks and appreciation to his friends and colleagues at the Herb-aria, especially Peter Ashton, Jen Baltzer, Stuart Davies, Jessica Dolan, Wendy Duan, Amy Dunham, Ken Feeley, Kanchi Ghandi, Henry Kesner, Walter Kittridge, Genevieve Lewis-Gentry, Dave Lohman, Laura Lukas, Melinda Peters, Sabrina Russo, and Emily Wood. Our publisher has been very supportive of this remaining volume of the series, and for this we thank them, especially Ed Walters and Christine LeBlond, who patiently guided us along the way. We salute the CEO of Periplus, Eric Oey, for his commitment to the series.

We are indebted to the Indonesian State Minister of the Environment for providing the Preface for the book, and the Papuan Peoples’ Assembly for their supporting letter. We thank Professor Edward O. Wilson for providing the Foreword. In addition, we recognize J. Burke Burnett for his dedication to the completion of this project. Michelle Brown also deserves mention as an important supporter of the initiative.

The project could not have happened without the support and dedication of the Government of Indonesia. In particular, we thank Dr. Dedy Darnedi, director of the Biology Research and Development Center, Indonesian Institute of Science. We also thank the Universitas Cenderawasih in Abepura and the State University of Papua in Manokwari for their support. Thanks also to the Papua Conservation Fund for supporting this project.

Anne McGuire was this project’s tireless editor, reader, and indexer. For this major contribution, we offer our utmost gratitude to her. In a like manner, Ann Twombly provided the excellent book design, and patiently saw this unwieldy project through to the typesetter and, finally, the printer. Thanks for her wonderful work!

Finally, we thank our families for their support, and we hope the students of Papua over the next decade will find this book helpful in their efforts to better know and better conserve all that makes Papua unique—the forests and waters and wildlife and traditional societies.

19 October 2006
Andrew J. Marshall	Bruce M. Beehler
Davis, California	Washington, D.C.