By Will McCarry
December 4, 2023
With new discovery, island nation turns page on a painful legacy
8 min
Nathan Conaboy’s day had taken an unexpected turn, and he now found himself in a distant cavern, searching for geckos.
He and a band of scientists had set out one morning in August to survey wildlife. When monsoon rains washed out the road they were traveling on, the team decided to make the most of it — and stay dry — by poking around a nearby cave they had initially not planned to visit.
The journey was the first of its kind in many years — and turned up a fortuitous find.
“The passage gradually expands into this bulbous chamber,” Conaboy said. “It was easy to imagine people once living there in the ancient past.”
Onn wedged himself between the rocks and lunged. It was a near miss. But Onn had a hunch that the gecko might be a species new to science.
The team decided to go back to the cave later that night, when geckos are most active.
The gecko's new name held added significance as one of the expedition’s Timorese team members was the nephew of the park's namesake — Nino Konis Santana, a revered war hero in the nation's long struggle for independence.
As remarkable as the gecko's discovery was, it signified something more: a fresh approach to conservation in a nation historically marked by foreign intrusion and exploitation.
An evolving history
Nestled between Australia and Indonesia, Timor-Leste is one of the world’s youngest countries. Its name, derived from the Indonesian, Malay and Portuguese words for "east," reflects a history marked by diverse cultures and colonization.
But even as the nation’s modern era has been defined by outside influence, its biodiversity was formed through isolation. Deep-water straits have separated Timor-Leste from the continental shelves of Asia and Australia for millions of years, giving rise to numerous species found nowhere else on the planet.
Like his contemporary Charles Darwin’s famous voyage to the Galapagos, Wallace's explorations across Timor and neighboring islands ignited his pathbreaking work.
“To this day, Wallace represents our baseline scientific understanding of this part of the world. He spent so much time here and discovered so many species,” said former Conservation International expert Frances Loke, who also joined the expedition.
But much about Timor-Leste has changed since. After 500 years of Portuguese colonial rule, the country fell under Indonesian control from 1975 to 1999 before eventually gaining its independence and becoming a democracy.
Still, its past left a legacy.
“Timor-Leste has experienced a long history of colonialism that not only affected the kind of nature that we see there, but also the kinds of structures in place to study and protect nature,” Loke said. “For years the country has been plagued by what we call ‘helicopter science’ — international scientists going in and paying off local guides, extracting specimens without any proper authority or due credit for local communities.”
“These artifacts were taken from Timor-Leste with very limited or no approvals,” Conaboy said. "And the Timorese people are unable to access them because they are stored away in an Australian museum."
By 2020, the Timorese government put a full stop on scientific research involving the removal of artifacts and specimens from the country. Conservation International spent years working to find a way for new research to continue through proper channels.
"The scoping expedition really marked the inaugural journey under the agreement,” Conaboy said. “It represents the beginning of a genuine and mutually advantageous partnership — one that respects Timor-Leste's history and can contribute to shaping its future."
Now that the gecko’s holotype has made its way into the collection at Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, the team is planning to return to Timor-Leste for a larger, more comprehensive expedition.
“We have to make the case for conservation now,” Loke said. “Otherwise, these ecosystems could be destroyed before we even know what species are there.”
Stay close to the work
