Lore Lindu

Lore Lindu National Park lies in the province of Central Sulawesi, some sixty kilometres from the city of Palu, and protects one of the largest montane rainforests left on the island. Close to 90% of its area is mountain forest above a thousand metres, which makes it the finest representative of Sulawesi's upland flora and fauna. It was formed by merging three earlier protected areas: the Lore Kalamanta Nature Reserve, the Lake Lindu recreation area and another adjoining reserve. Its boundaries are marked by the Palolo valley to the north, Napu to the east and Bada to the south, and it receives up to 4,000 mm of rain a year in its southern sector.

Sulawesi is a biogeographically singular island, lying east of the Wallace Line, with a fauna that comes neither from Asia nor from Australia but from a long evolution in isolation. The park holds much of that endemic fauna: the anoa, a dwarf buffalo, the babirusa, the spectral tarsier and the maleo, a megapode bird that incubates its eggs with geothermal or solar heat.

Its archaeological value is equally notable: the Napu, Behoa and Bada valleys are strewn with megaliths — anthropomorphic statues, stone jars and slabs — dated by archaeological study to between 3000 BC and AD 1300, whose purpose and authorship remain matters of debate. The park is the territory of the Kaili, Behoa, Bada and Pekurehua groups: there are 117 villages inside it or on its edge, and their inhabitants live from rice, maize and cocoa. The main threats are illegal logging, hunting and agricultural pressure, and management relies on community participation. Lore Lindu was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in the 1970s.