Tokyo – After five years as an independent nation, East Timor has declared its first national park.
The government formally approved the declaration of Nino Konis Santana National Park on July 27, according to a statement from the East Timorese acting prime minister's office seen here Sunday.
The 123,600-hectare park incorporates the entire northeastern tip of East Timor, comprising 68,000 hectares of land and 55,600 hectares of sea, the statement said.
"It conserves an extensive range of land and seascapes and will protect nationally and globally significant flora and fauna species and habitats on both land and sea, including extensive coral reefs and one of the largest remaining intact examples of tropical lowland and monsoon rainforest in the region," it said.
According to BirdLife International, which has carried out numerous biological surveys in East Timor, the park lies within the Coral Triangle, an area with the greatest biodiversity of coral and reef fish in the world.
It is habitat for rare and threatened species including green sea turtles, dugongs and saltwater crocodiles.
Particularly rich in bird life, it includes relatively large numbers of three globally threatened species of pigeon, plus the critically endangered Yellow-Crested Cockatoo, one of the world's rarest birds whose populations have been devastated by trapping for trade as household pets.
The area is also rich in archaeological heritage with many sites from the colonial Portuguese and World War II Japanese occupation periods.
The park was named in honor of Nino Konis Santana, a national hero and former rebel commander in the struggle for independence, who was born in a village within the national park's boundaries. The area was a stronghold of the resistance movement during the struggle that culminated in East Timor's separation from Indonesia in 1999 and its formal independence in 2002.
BirdLife International, a global alliance of conservation organizations, helped the East Timor government set up the national park with assistance from the New South Wales government in Australia and funding from the Australian and British governments as well as Japan's Keidanren Nature Conservation Fund.