New Guinea Highlands in the context of "Dani people"

Montane grasslands and shrublands are a biome defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. The term montane in the name of the biome refers to high elevation, rather than the ecological term that denotes the region below the treeline. The biome includes high-elevation (montane and alpine) grasslands and shrublands around the world, including the puna and páramo in South America, subalpine heath in New Guinea and East Africa, steppes of the Tibetan plateaus, and other similar subalpine habitats.Drier subtropical montane grasslands, savannas, and woodlands include the Ethiopian Highlands, the Zambezian montane grasslands and woodlands, and the montane habitats of southeastern Africa.

The páramos of the northern Andes are the most extensive examples of the habitat type. Although ecoregion biotas are most diverse in the Andes, these ecosystems are distinctive wherever they occur in the tropics. The heathlands and moorlands of East Africa (e.g., Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya, Rwenzori Mountains), Mount Kinabalu of Borneo, and the Central Range of New Guinea are all limited in extent, isolated, and support endemic plants and animals.The plants and animals of tropical montane páramos display striking adaptations to cool, wet conditions and intense sunlight. Around the world, characteristic plants of these habitats display features such as rosette structures, waxy surfaces, and abundant pilosity.

The Baliem Valley (Indonesian: Lembah Baliem; also spelled Balim and sometimes known as the Grand Valley) is a valley of the Central Highlands in Western New Guinea, specifically in the province of Highland Papua, Indonesia. The main town in the valley is Wamena, which lies on the Baliem River. The valley is about 80 km in length by 20 km in width and lies at an altitude of about 1,600–1,700 metres (5,200–5,600 ft), with a population of over 200,000.

The discovery of the Baliem Valley to the Western world and the unexpected presence of its large agricultural population was made by Richard Archbold’s third zoological expedition to New Guinea in 1938. On 21 June an aerial reconnaissance flight southwards from Hollandia (now Jayapura) found what the expedition called the "Grand Valley". Flights in later weeks described fenced villages of 3-50 houses, farm fields and drainage ditches. They landed on Lake Habbema 15 miles west. Teams of Dutch soldiers and Dayak people recruited from Borneo collected flora and fauna in the Baliem Valley, but did not know the language and killed one native without firing a warning shot. 10-15 villages formed a neighborhood, within an hour's walk. Several neighborhoods made a confederation, and several confederations made an alliance of 4,000-5,000 people, which was constantly fighting feuds to avenge previous deaths caused by members of other alliances, though all had the same culture, ethnicity and language.

Highland Papua (Indonesian: Papua Pegunungan, lit. 'Papua Mountains') is a province of Indonesia, which roughly follows the borders of the Papuan customary region of Lano Pago (often shortened to La Pago). It covers an area of 51,213.33 km (19,773.58 sq mi) and had a population of 1,467,050 according to the official estimates as at mid 2024 (comprising 783,220 males and 683,830 females).

Formally established on 25 July 2022 from the central and mountainous former part of the province of Papua, it is located on the central highlands of Western New Guinea, where it is the first and only landlocked province in Indonesia. The capital of Highland Papua is in Jayawijaya Regency, in Hubikosi District. The legal provision for the province's establishment was approved by the People's Representative Council on 30 June 2022, with the bill signed into Law No. 16/2022 by President Joko Widodo on 25 July, making it one of Indonesia's three then-youngest provinces alongside Central Papua and South Papua (which were subsequently joined by the even newer Southwest Papua Province). It borders Papua New Guinea to its east, South Papua to its south, Central Papua to its west (and southwest) and the residual Papua Province to its north.

The Papuan Peninsula, also known as the Bird's Tail Peninsula, is a large peninsula in Papua New Guinea, southeast of the city of Lae, that makes up the southeastern portion of the island of New Guinea. The peninsula is the easternmost extent of the New Guinea Highlands and consists largely of the Owen Stanley Range, with peaks such as Mount Victoria (4,038 m) and Mount Suckling (3,676 m). On the south coast is Port Moresby, the capital and largest city of Papua New Guinea.

The island of New Guinea is often visualized as being in the shape of a bird, with the Bird's Head Peninsula being at the northwest end of the island, and the Bird's Tail Peninsula at the southeast end. For example, American soldiers in WWII visualized it specifically as a turkey, and referenced the anatomy of the bird as a shorthand for explaining where various actions and deployments occurred on the island.

The Maoke Mountains is a mountain range in the province of Central Papua and Highland Papua. It extends over 692 km and is composed of the Sudirman and Jayawijaya ranges. It is part of the larger New Guinea Highlands or Central Cordillera.

Although Maoke means 'snow' in the local language, the glacier on Puncak Trikora in the Maoke Mountains disappeared completely some time between 1939 and 1962.

In the taxonomic treatment presented in the third (2005) edition of Mammal Species of the World, Canis lupus dingo is a taxonomic rank that includes both the dingo that is native to Australia and the New Guinea singing dog that is native to the New Guinea Highlands. It also includes some extinct dogs that were once found in coastal Papua New Guinea and the island of Java in the Indonesian Archipelago. In this treatment it is a subspecies of Canis lupus, the wolf (the domestic dog is treated as a different wolf subspecies), although other treatments consider the dog as a full species, with the dingo and its relatives either as a subspecies of the dog (as Canis familiaris dingo), a species in its own right (Canis dingo), or simply as an unnamed variant or genetic clade within the larger population of dogs (thus, Canis familiaris, not further differentiated). The genetic evidence indicates that the dingo clade originated from East Asian domestic dogs and was introduced through the Malay Archipelago into Australia, with a common ancestry between the Australian dingo and the New Guinea singing dog. The New Guinea singing dog is genetically closer to those dingoes that live in southeastern Australia than to those that live in the northwest.

The New Guinea singing dog or New Guinea Highland dog (Canis lupus hallstromi) is an ancient (basal) lineage of dog found in the New Guinea Highlands, on the island of New Guinea. Once considered to be a separate species in its own right, under the name Canis hallstromi, it is closely related to the Australian dingo. The dog is relatively unusual among canines; it is one of the few to be considered "barkless", and is known for the unusual "yodel"-like style of vocalizing that gives it its name.

In 1989, the Australian mammalogist Tim Flannery took a photo of a black-and-tan dog in Telefomin District. He noted that these dogs lived with local tribal peoples in the mountains, and that feral populations lived in the alpine and sub-alpine grasslands of the Star Mountains and the Wharton Range. The photo was published in his book, Mammals of New Guinea. In 2012, Australian wilderness-adventure guide Tom Hewett took a photo of a tawny, thick-coated dog in the Puncak Mandala region of West Papua, Indonesia. In 2016, a literature review found no definitive evidence that the earliest possible dogs, within captive populations of New Guinea singing dogs, were wild animals; successive generations of puppies were raised as members of village populations, thus being domestic dogs.

Epilobium is a genus of flowering plants in the family Onagraceae, containing about 197 species. The genus has a worldwide distribution. It is most prevalent in the subarctic, temperate and subantarctic regions, whereas in the subtropics and tropics Epilobium species are restricted to the cool montane biomes, such as the New Guinea Highlands.

The taxonomy of the genus has varied between different botanists, but the modern trend is to include the previously recognised genera Boisduvalia, Chamaenerion (previously Chamerion), Pyrogennema and Zauschneria within Epilobium according to Peter H. Raven, who has extensively studied the willowherbs and merges the other segregate genera into Epilobium. Fringed willowherb (Epilobium ciliatum) is likely a cryptic species complex; apparently these plants also commonly hybridize with their congeners.