FAUNA

The Fauna Biodiversity of Indonesia

The Fauna Kingdom

Indonesia is one of the countries in the world that are blessed with a wide variety of animals. It is famous because it has the great biodiversity. In fact, there are as many as 300,000 species of animals live in different ecosystem in the country. This means, Indonesia alone already owns around 17% of the fauna species in the world. What is even greater is the fact that this great numbers of fauna lives across only 1.3 % of the landmass of the entire world. Indonesia alone has 515 mammal species. This number exceeds any other nations in the world. Moreover to the great numbers of mammals, Indonesia also has more then 1500 types of bird species. Not only the land and air of Indonesia, the water of the country is also rich with fish species. In fact, around 50% from the total fish species in the world can be found in the waters of Indonesia, both in the salty water of the ocean and the fresh water of the rivers. 

Unfortunately, some of these animals are endangered. Some are even in the critically endangered species list. Among these critically endangered animals are the Kalimantan Orang Utan, Sumatera Orang Utan, Sumatera Elephant, JavaRhino, etc. The list of endangered species is created by The World Conservation Union. These endangered animals are on the verge on extinction because of many factors. Some of the factors are the change in their habitat as humans have moved further to the forest and deforest the areas and thus creating a strange habitat that are not suitable for them and destroy some of the valuable forest whilst leading the world into an even worse global warming. Moreover, many humans are not aware on the importance of the existence of these animals and therefore they hunt them down to take parts of their bodies or even consume them because of the belief that the body parts are good for humans. In addition, some of the most endangered animals are in captivity by the humans to be used as pets even the local authority had issued the regulation against this. Local animal markets and stores are also still selling some of the endangered species without the proper food and living area.  

The local government, local and international organizations are aware of these facts and therefore they have based themselves in the areas of the endangered species to provide required actions to preserve these animals. Profauna Indonesia and WWF Indonesia are among these organizations that are highly active in campaigning as well as doing actions to improve the populations of all the species.

Types of Animals

According to Wallace fauna types, the fauna in Indonesia can be divided into three types, they are:

1.  Asiatic Fauna Type 

The Asiatic fauna type covers the eastern part of the country or in the areas of Sumetera, Kalimantan, Java and Bali. We can find large mammals in these areas, most of them are in the family of Apes and fresh water fishes. However, there are only few colorful birds in these areas. Some examples of the animals that can be included in the Asiatic Fauna Type are Orang Utans, Proboscis Apes, Rhinos, Lions Heron birds and peacocks.  

2.  Austral Asiatic Fauna Type 

The Austral Asiatic Fauna Types are the transitional faunas. They can be located in the middle part of the country. These faunas can be found in the borders of two continents, the Asian continent and the Australia continent. The Austral Asiatic Fauna Types can be found in areas such as the Sulawesi, middle part of Nusa Tenggara. In these areas, we can easily find endemic animals. Among the Austral Asiatic Fauna in these areas are the swine, deers, horses, Polecat, Anoa and komodo dragons.  

3.  Australic Fauna Type 

The Australic Fauna Types can only be found in few areas in Indonesia, they are the islands of Aru and Papua. The Australic Fauna type exists in the eastern part of Indonesia. On the contrary to the Asiatic Fauna Type, in these areas, there are many types of colorful birds but quite a few large mammals. In these areas, we can find Marsupial fauna as well as different types of colorful and big birds. The examples of the animals are the kangaroo, cendrawasih birds or also known as paradise birds, cockatoos, parrots, cassowary and also wallabies.