Wasur

Wasur National Park was established in 1990 in Merauke regency, at the south-eastern tip of Papua, next to the border with Papua New Guinea, and protects some 4,138 km². It adjoins the Tonda Wildlife Management Area on the other side of the border, with which it forms a cross-border protected block of great extent.

It is known as the Serengeti of Papua for its open landscape: a plain of eucalypt and melaleuca savannah dotted with wetlands that flood during the monsoon and dry out afterwards, concentrating wildlife in the residual pools. That seasonal cycle produces spectacular gatherings of waterbirds and is the basis of its ecological value. Much of the park is listed as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention.

Its fauna is Australian, not Asian, because New Guinea shares a continental shelf with Australia: there are agile wallabies, cassowaries, magpie geese, brolgas, black-necked storks and a very abundant waterbird fauna, with hundreds of thousands of birds in the dry season. The park is inhabited by four indigenous groups — Marind, Kanum, Yei and Marori — who hold customary rights over the territory and practise traditional hunting and gathering; management rests on agreements with those communities. The main threats are introduced species, in particular the rusa deer and the cane toad, and fires outside the natural cycle.