Tracking the Very Large, Very Elusive Star of Papua's Forests: the Northern Cassowary | All About Birds

Tracking the Very Large, Very Elusive Star of Papua's Forests: the Northern Cassowary | All About Birds
Deep in the interior rainforest, a wildlife photographer, an ornithologist, and three local Indigenous guides ventured into the realm of the Northern Cassowary on a mission to capture images of Papua’s mysterious forest giants.
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Spring 2026
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Roosters crow back and forth in the cold morning air of Malagufuk Valley, in the Makbon District of Southwest Papua, Indonesia. The sun is still hiding, preparing to rise and spill light across the land. Inside a modest wooden house, three young Indigenous men from the Moi Tribe get ready to head into the forest and wade into the layered sounds of a tropical rainforest waking up.
Yance and Nimbrot Kalami—both members of the Kalami clan—and their friend Bastian Magablo carefully pack three camera traps. They will carry them deep into the Malagufuk forest to replace earlier cameras damaged by rain and humidity. It is their third month in a row entering the forest, routinely checking and reinstalling cameras at selected sites.
For the three young men, the forest feels like a playground. Since childhood, the Kalamis and Magablo have grown up with the forest as a constant companion. Like many Papuans, they see the forest as inseparable from life itself. It is more than a place to explore—it is a source of food, shelter, and stories passed down through generations. People hunt and gather here, sustaining daily life from what the forest provides.
The Bird’s Head Peninsula is a biodiversity hotspot on the island of New Guinea, which itself is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth—home to more than 700 bird species.
Map by 2025 Bartels Illustrator Joel Popp
Setting camera traps is a relatively new experience for them, one spurred by the growth of ecotourism on the island of New Guinea, which emerged in this area around 2014. The Kalamis and Magablo were pioneers, the first generation of Malagufuk youth to become ecotourism guides. Their village lies at the heart of the Klasow Forest, a vast tropical rainforest in the Bird’s Head region of Indonesian Papua that spans more than 130 square miles and harbors one of the last great strongholds of biodiversity on Earth.
Birds-of-paradise are the headline attraction for birdwatchers, who come from as far away as China, Europe, and the United States to visit Malagufuk.
“Usually they come for birds—birds-of-paradise, for sure,” Nimbrot Kalami says. “Then there’s the echidna, a strange animal we call the spiny pig. There are other birds too, like the crowned-pigeon and the Papuan hornbill. And one more—the cassowary. A big bird that’s very hard to see.”
Finding a cassowary, let alone watching one in the wild, is always a challenge. Elusive and wary, it moves silently through the forest understory. And yet, this legendary giant bird remains a dream experience for visitors—rare, powerful, and unforgettable, even when it stays just out of view. Birders often hear its deep, resonant calls echoing through the rainforest, or stumble upon its massive three-toed tracks pressed into the mud—signs that this prehistoric presence is near, even if it never steps into a clearing.
This flightless, towering single-wattled bird—standing 5 to 6 feet tall—is at the heart of the mission for the three friends from Malagufuk. Their goal is to document the Northern Cassowary that roams the Papuan lowland forests. The camera-trapping program they are operating in Malagufuk Forest is part of a documentary film project, led by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Working alongside renowned wildlife photographer Tim Laman and Yoki Hadiprakarsa, an ornithologist from the Rekam Nusantara Foundation on the Indonesian island of Java, the Kalamis and Magablo are part of a first-of-its kind effort to uncover the hidden life of the Northern Cassowary, Papua’s most mysterious giant.
The resulting film produced by the Cornell Lab’s Center for Conservation Media, released in December 2025, explores the bird’s role in the rainforest ecosystem—with a goal to help people in Indonesia and everywhere gain a deeper, more accurate understanding of cassowaries and their importance to forest health.
In Search of the Northern Cassowary.
Follow along with wildlife photographer Tim Laman, Indonesian ornithologist Yoki Hadiprakarsa, and local Indigenous forest guides as they stalk cassowaries in lowland rainforest and use camera traps to capture an image of Papua’s mysterious forest giants.
Video produced by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Center for Conservation Media.
Show Transcript
[Bird calls]

[Yoki Hadiprakarsa narrating]: There is a bird few have seen in the forest of Papua, Indonesia. It exists in relative silence and lives behind signs of its existence. This creature is secretive and also holds a secret. It keeps the forest’s future, an unknowing architect that builds the forest with every move, every step. In this place, people and forests live together. Without this bird, the forests as we know them will cease to exist.
[Bird calls]

[Tim Laman speaking Indonesian]: It’s very easy to use and it can take pictures at night too.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa narrating]: Malagufuk, a small village in the lowland forests of West Papua sits within the world’s third largest rainforest, a place of exceptional biodiversity and ecological importance. Here, traditional knowledge and scientific inquiry unite.
Forest guides Bastian Maggablo, Nimrod Kalami, and Yanja Kalami are working alongside Tim Laman and myself, Yoki Hadiprakarsa, to deploy camera traps, non-invasive tools that let us observe wildlife without disturbing it.
[Tim Laman onscreen]: The species that we’re trying to document here is called the Northern Cassowary. It’s found along the northern side of the big island of New Guinea.
The cassowary is a species that is really important for the forest, but it’s not that well known. But the populations are declining as habitat is reduced and in many areas it’s facing a lot of hunting pressure.
[Yance Kalami speaking Indonesian]: In my opinion there are still many cassowaries in this area, but if you want to see them, it’s really hard. They don’t live in one place. Today they could be eating fruit here, but tomorrow they’ll move on to someplace else.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa narrating]: Though people rarely see them, cassowaries play a profound ecological role. They help build this forest by consuming large fruit and dispersing seeds far away from the parent tree. But detecting this bird challenges us. It moves silently through dense vegetation, leaving only footprints, droppings, and occasionally rustles in the undergrowth.
[Tim Laman onscreen]: You may hear birds of paradise calling. You can hear hornbills flying overhead and running across tracks of massive cassowaries in the muddy parts of the trail here.
Here’s a pile of fruits. There’s a cassowary track right here. See the toe? It’s as big as my hand.
[Cassowary calling]

[Yoki Hadiprakarsa onscreen]: Wow.
[Tim Laman onscreen]: So, he’s not too far away. Maybe just a couple hundred meters.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa onscreen]: Yeah.
[Tim Laman voiceover]: We’ve been exploring the forest, finding locations where we see signs of cassowaries, things like a fruiting tree, animal trails, clay licks, and we’ve been placing out these cameras now for the past week or so. They are very big, but they are very hard to see in the forest. They’re very elusive and they’re not so predictable.
[Bird calls and music building]

[Voices offscreen]: Wow. Oh, huge.
[Tim Laman]: So, now we’re in the Papua, the third biggest rainforest in the world.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa onscreen]: Unbelievable. The fig trees when it’s fruiting is like a supermarket in the rainforest.
[Tim Laman onscreen]: Yeah.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa speaking in Indonesian]: Very big! I haven’t seen anything this big in a long time.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa speaking in English]: Even their pandan tree is also gigantic.
[Tim Laman]: It’s amazing to be in a forest where all these big trees are still here, right? They haven’t been cut down. All intertwined with the bird life.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa onscreen]: It’s a good example that Papuan forest is not just for the Papuan, not just for the Indonesian, but also for the world because the roles to absorbing the carbon and you know maintaining the climate, right?
[Tim Laman]: Yeah. They say this is one of the ironwood trees, really slow growing tree. So it could be hundreds of years old.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: Oh man.
[Music]

[Tim Laman]: This could be an interesting place to put a camera. We got a nice view of the forest with the big tree behind there. And we’ve got a trail coming along the river bank here close to the river. And we think that uh this is place that be used by cassowaries as they move through this area.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: Yeah, I think that’s good. This bird is one of the heaviest birds living in the world.
[Tim Laman]: Yeah. How much do they weigh?
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa onscreen]: Uh I’m now 70. Yes. About my weight.
[Tim Laman onscreen]: About your weight? Like 60, 70 kilo.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: 60, 70 kilos.
[Tim Laman]: Wow. And then how tall?
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa onscreen]: How tall you are?
[Tim Laman onscreen]: I’m about 190 cm.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: Yeah. And 170 is probably about
[Tim Laman onscreen]: So right about about our height—between us.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: Yes. Between us. Between us. It’s a huge huge bird.
[Tim Laman]: That’s a big bird. Yeah.
[Tim Laman]: So that’s the biggest animal in the New Guinea rainforest, right? There’s no big mammals here. There’s no big mammals at all.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: Yeah. Yeah.
[Tim Laman]: So the bird is the biggest animal.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: Yeah. In Papua. Even though it’s huge bird, it’s difficult to see, right? It’s so elusive.
[Tim Laman]: Yeah.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: The cassowary has a short digestive system. So it means when swallowing this big_the seeds will come out harmlessly.
[Tim Laman]: Yeah.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: So that’s why you know they also effective dispersing the seeds.
[Tim Laman]: Yeah. And probably no other bird that can disperse this seed.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: Oh yeah. It’s big for sure.
[Tim Laman]: But right underneath the tree. I mean the seed could germinate here but then it’s just competing with the mother tree. Right.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: Mother tree, yes.
[Tim Laman]: So it’s a big benefit to the species to the tree if the seeds are spread…
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: …far away from the mother tree by a…
[Tim Laman]: …by a cassowary.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa onscreen]: This is a huge pile of cassowary poops. This is a good example of the ecological roles of the cassowary. While in the sky we have hornbills who are also dispersing the seed. And on the ground in Papua we have one of the largest living birds.
[Music and bird calls]

[Speaking Indonesian]

[Music]

[Music and bird calls]

[Speaking Indonesian]

[Music and bird calls]

[Tim Laman onscreen]: The camera’s fogged again?
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa onscreen]: Yeah.
[Tim Laman onscreen]: Oh my goodness.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa narrating]: Slowly, these forest secrets begin to be revealed. The camera captures many surprises. Each one offering a glimpse into the rich biodiversity that hides among the trees. We experience moments of success, but the cassowary stay just out of reach. Tantalizingly close, yet never fully seen.
[Tim Laman onscreen]: Oh, we got a part of a cassowary. Come on, turn around. Come back. We got a cassowary butt.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa narrating]: Filming cassowaries takes more than technology. It requires persistence, precision, local knowledge and a deep respect for the forest rhythms. For months we wait, watch, wonder. Then as if answering us,
[Music]

[People exclaiming in Indonesian and English]

[Tim Laman onscreen] That’s amazing.
[Speaking Indonesian]: It worked! It’s a good spot, yes?. Yeah, he’s there! Extraordinary.
[Music]

[Tim Laman]: We know from scientific research that the cassowaries have a unique parental care system where the male takes care of the chick, not the female. The female lays the egg, but then the male incubates the egg and then takes care of the chick. We were able to capture several different aged chicks from a really small one up to a juvenile, but still with the father.
We even caught a moment where the father seems to be showing the chick what it can eat.
[Music and bird calls]

[Tim Laman voiceover]: Here’s the track of a male casawary followed by his chick.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa narrating]: In following the Northern Cassowary, we’ve come to understand more than just the bird. We’ve seen how life moves through this forest. Carried in beaks and bellies, scattered in silence, and nurtured by time.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa onscreen]: You want to try it, Tim? It’s good.
[Tim Laman]: Yeah?
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: Yeah.
[Tim Laman]: You sure it’s not one that already went through a cassowary? [Yoki Hadiprakarsa laughing] I think this is still fresh. It has a sweet and a good acidity.
[Tim Laman]: Yeah. Definitely in the mango family, right?
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: It’s mango family for sure. Yeah. Nice.
[Tim Laman onscreen]: The cassowaries, they don’t really seem to enjoy the flavor of their fruits. They just like straight down.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa onscreen]: Yeah. And then on the digestive will be basically just squeeze the juice out of it and then just release it.
[Tim Laman]: Yeah.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa]: Because what we saw is still intact everything, right? Even the flesh is still there.
[Tim Laman]: Yep.
[Yoki Hadiprakarsa narrating]: Cassowaries sustain the forest, but so do the people of Malagufuk who call this forest home. They serve as the guardians of this forest, protecting both cassowary and canopy with quiet determination. Their futures are bound together. Imagine this forest without their unseen stewards, without cassowaries to carry seeds across the land. The forest as we know it will be unable to renew itself. But with each fruit swallowed, with each seed scattered, the future of the forest is sustained. This is the cassowary’s timeless role. One that will safeguard Papua’s forest for generations yet to come.
[Music]

[Yance Kalami speaking Indonesian]: My hope is for this forest to be known to the world. My hope, for all of us, the families of Malagufuk, and for our children, and the next generation—is that hopefully, the forests will be protected forever. That’s all.
[Music and bird calls]

[Bird calls]

[Loud cassowary call]

[Cassowary call with other bird calls]
End of Transcript
Blending technology with Indigenous knowledge
“Cassowaries are huge, but they’re incredibly hard to see,” says Laman, who has made dozens of visits to Papua over the past two decades to photograph and film rainforest wildlife from birds-of-paradise to hornbills to, now for the first time, the Northern Cassowary.
Because cassowaries are so difficult to encounter in the wild, scientific knowledge about them remains limited. That’s what makes this project so crucial—not only to learn more about the bird itself, but also to educate people about its role in maintaining healthy forests.
Laman says that the beginnings of this camera-trap project were a happy coincidence, when he first came to Malagufuk Village in 2023 to photograph birds-of-paradise.
Twelve-wired Bird-of-Paradise.
Western Crowned-Pigeons.
Lesser Bird-of-Paradise.
Magnificent Bird-of-Paradise.
King Bird-of-Paradise.
Blyth’s (or Papuan) Hornbills.
Western long-beaked echidna.
“But then I learned there were cassowaries, too,” Laman recalls. “We saw their tracks … and I realized something important. The cassowary is the symbol of West Papua Province. It’s on the flag, on the provincial emblem—but most people don’t actually know much about it.”
“They’re elusive and unpredictable,” Laman says about the challenge of filming cassowaries. “With hornbills, you can find a fruiting tree and watch them come every day. Cassowaries are different—they range over very large areas. Seeing them directly, let alone filming them, is extremely difficult. So camera traps are the solution. We work closely with local guides from Malagufuk who know this forest intimately. They help us identify fruiting trees that cassowaries might visit.”
As skilled hunters and forest trackers, the Kalamis and Magablo know exactly where cassowary signs are likely to appear. They recognize favored routes and feeding areas, even though the great bird moves like a ghost through the undergrowth. By reading footprints and droppings, they advised Laman and Hadiprakarsa, the consulting ornithologist on the project, on where to place the cameras.
Moi guides use footprints and droppings to identify spots where camera traps can capture images such as a foraging Northern Cassowary and a cassowary with young. Cassowaries pass large seeds through their digestive tracts, so tree seedlings often sprout from their droppings.
“They can tell whether a cassowary track is fresh or old. Sometimes they’ll say, ‘This track is only a few hours old.’ It’s extraordinary,” Hadiprakarsa says. “I asked if there was a place where all animals come to drink, some kind of natural mineral source. They told us they knew one spot where mammals and birds alike gather. That became one of our key locations for capturing cassowary images.”
Laman and Hadiprakarsa placed camera traps exactly where the three guides suggested. The results confirmed their instincts. Early on, the cameras captured only a leg or half a body of the massive bird. Adjustments followed—camera distance, height above the forest floor, and angle were all fine-tuned.
In total, 18 cameras were deployed over eight months across 14 different locations. Four cameras failed due to constant humidity, heavy rain, and extreme forest conditions, and had to be replaced. In the end, their persistence paid off with extraordinary images of cassowaries moving through their forest world.
“I’m really happy I could help,” Yance Kalami says. “I could finally see the cassowary clearly through the cameras we placed.”
For the Kalamis, the experience was about more than income—it was about learning.
“We didn’t know before that it’s the male cassowary who raises the chicks,” Yance Kalami says. “We thought, like most animals, the mother did that. But cassowaries are different.”
“We’ve always known where to look for cassowaries. We know their tracks and their sounds,” says Nimbrot Kalami. “But through this project, we learned something new—that
Kelm Bell
[the local Indigenous name for the Northern Cassowary] is incredibly important for our forest. Now we understand why people call cassowaries the forest’s farmers.”
Papuan rainforests owe a debt to Northern Cassowaries. The big, fruit-eating birds are often called “forest farmers” because they disperse the seeds of so many important tree species.
A Forest Built by Birds
All three of the world’s cassowary species—the Northern Cassowary, Southern Cassowary, and the Dwarf Cassowary (which at 3 feet tall stands about half the size of the other two cassowaries)—occur on the island of New Guinea. Yet the Southern Cassowary also ranges into northern Australia and the Maluku Islands, while the Dwarf Cassowary can be found in the Solomon Islands. The Northern Cassowary is only found on this island.
“Some people say cassowaries are dangerous. Even my grandfather used to say that,” Yance Kalami says. “They’re big, they can kick, and they have claws like knives. Maybe that’s true. But for us, when we meet them in the forest, they’re actually the ones who are afraid. When they see us, they usually run away.”
Behind their reputation as dangerous birds lies a deeper truth: Cassowaries are a keystone species, essential to the health and regeneration of tropical forests. Without them, much of Papua’s forests would slowly lose their vitality.
“Cassowaries are often called the ‘Forest Farmers’ or ‘Forest Gardeners,’” says Hadiprakarsa. “They carry seeds deep into the forest and spread them through nutrient-rich droppings.”
Cassowaries are the largest fruit-eaters in Papua’s lowland forests. Their powerful bodies and strong bills allow them to swallow large fruits whole, including the fruits from the
Terminalia
tree—tropical giants that can soar more than 100 feet high and serve as the hardwood pillars of complex rainforest architecture. Researchers have found seeds from five
Terminalia
tree species in cassowary droppings.
As frugivores, cassowaries play a critical ecological role, because in many ways Papua’s forests are built by birds. Around 90% of tropical tree species in Papua depend, at least in part, on animals like cassowaries to disperse their seeds. Without cassowaries, many trees would fail to regenerate naturally—particularly in disturbed or deforested areas. Cassowaries help maintain the forest’s life cycle, ensuring that young trees grow to replace the old.
Because Papua’s forests lack large fruit-eating mammals like those found in the Amazon or Congo basins—such as monkeys and apes, animals capable of spreading big seeds across vast distances—cassowaries on Papua fill that large-seed-dispersing role.
Related Stories
Gardening for Cassowaries
And because cassowaries are keeping and creating new generations of rainforest, they are safeguarding one of the world’s richest storehouses of biodiversity. The island of New Guinea—shared by Indonesia and the independent country of Papua New Guinea—holds the world’s third-largest tropical rainforest, after the Amazon and the Congo. Rainforest covers roughly 70% of the island of New Guinea’s land area, and harbors an estimated 14,000 plant species—with around 60% to 70% of those plants found nowhere else on Earth. More than 700 bird species live here, including 38 species of birds-of-paradise, alongside hundreds of reptiles, amphibians, insects, and mammals such as tree kangaroos. Nearly 7% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity is concentrated in this region that occupies less than 0.5% of the planet’s land surface.
Every species in the Papuan rainforest—from towering trees to flamboyant birds—plays a unique role in keeping this ecological web intact. Among birds, cassowaries, birds-of-paradise, and hornbills stand out as vital players in Papua’s forest ecosystems.
“Birds play crucial roles in ecosystems—as pollinators, pest controllers, and indicators of environmental health. But in Papua, cassowaries quite literally build the forest,” says Cornell Lab scientist Edwin Scholes, who has been conducting field research in New Guinea for more than 25 years and is the co-founder of the Birds-of-Paradise Project. “[Cassowaries] are the only animals large enough to swallow and disperse the big seeds of rainforest trees. With their short digestive systems, these seeds pass through undamaged and can be carried up to 30 kilometers from the parent tree.”
Setting up a camera trap.
Moi guides calibrate the camera trap.
Reviewing the footage.
Operating camera traps in the rainforest.
Setting up: Indonesian ornithologist Yoki Hadiprakarsa and Moi guides Yance Kalami and Nimbrot Kalami set up a camera with hopes of catching an image of a passing cassowary. Calibrating: Moi guides Bastian Magablo and Nimbrot Kalami calibrate the camera trap. Reviewing: Wildlife photographer Tim Laman and team review what the camera captured. Altogether the team hid 18 camera traps for a filming effort that took eight months.
“Without cassowaries performing this irreplaceable function, many tree species could not regenerate, and the forest as we know it would fail to renew itself,” he says. “They are truly architects of the rainforest.”
Although cassowaries are unrivaled in dispersing large seeds, they are not the forest’s only gardeners. Papua’s ecosystems are shaped by a diverse community of seed dispersers, each playing a different role. Hornbills, with their long bills and wide-ranging flight, disperse medium-sized fruits over great distances, often linking fragmented forest patches in landscapes broken up by human activity. Birds-of-paradise feed on smaller fruits, spreading seeds locally around the display trees where males perform their elaborate courtship dances. Small fruit-eating birds, such as pigeons, also help plant forests by dispersing millions of tiny seeds that create the dense understory layers that protect young trees. Even fruit bats, though not birds, are equally vital as nocturnal mammals that spread seeds and pollen for night-blooming plants.
Together, this network of seed dispersers maintains rainforest diversity. And in the process, cassowaries and the other birds and bats are providing an important service for the entire world, says Scholes. As part of the world’s third-largest tropical rainforest system, Papua’s forests store an estimated 15 billion tons of carbon in trees and soils and actively absorb more than 50 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.
“These forests are among the most powerful natural solutions we have left to limit global temperature rise,” Scholes says. “They are also home to at least 5% of the world’s plant and animal species, making them an irreplaceable biodiversity hotspot. What happens in Papua’s forests affects climate stability and biodiversity across the entire planet.”
Some conservationists in Indonesia have suggested a Cassowary Credit Scheme to raise funds for protecting this rainforest.
“If we want to keep cassowaries and the forests they build, we need more than good intentions—we need mechanisms that reward conservation,” says Yoki Hadiprakarsa, the Indonesian ornithologist. “A Cassowary Credit Scheme could be one way forward, linking biodiversity and carbon credits to real benefits for local communities.”
A similar model is being tested in Australia, in Queensland’s Wet Tropics, where landowners—including Indigenous communities—receive financial incentives to conserve and restore habitat, with verification through scientific monitoring and forest-quality credits. Governments, corporations, and philanthropies can purchase these credits to support conservation.
Hadiprakarsa says a comparable approach could be adapted in Papua—protecting cassowaries, restoring degraded forests, and creating sustainable income for local Indigenous communities.
Some blend of policy and economics will be needed to support the struggle of Indigenous Papuans to protect the forests that are their home—an oasis in a warming world. According to Hadiprakarsa, without community stewardship, the loss of these bird-built forests—especially those shaped by cassowaries—is only a matter of time.
“The biggest threat to Papua’s forests right now is land conversion for industrial crops,” he says. “This is a serious danger for the Klasow Valley and for all of Papua.”
“Oil palm is the biggest threat for us, the Moi people,” Yance Kalami adds. “We’ve learned from experience. We don’t want this forest—our home, and the home of the cassowary—to disappear because nature is destroyed.”
New trees sprout from seeds dropped by Northern Cassowaries—often called “forest farmers” because they disperse the seeds of important tree species in Papuan rainforests.
The Embodiment of
Egek
After eight months of pursuing cassowaries with cameras, the three young friends from the Moi Tribe came to a clear realization—protecting the cassowary means protecting the forest, and the land that defines who they are.
“We learned so much from placing the cameras and working with Tim and Yoki,” Yance Kalami says. “Now we understand how important cassowaries are for our forest, especially for us as Papuan people.”
He says that in the past, cassowaries were sometimes hunted—not as a primary target, but when they were caught accidentally in forest traps. That has changed. Today, the community no longer hunts in the forest except for wild pigs and deer, which are not native species. Cassowaries, along with other native birds and mammals unique to Papua, are no longer considered game.
For the Moi people, protecting the forest means protecting life itself.
“The forest is everything to us,” Yance Kalami says. “We live in the forest. We find all our food there. The forest is like a mother—because she gives us food, plants, medicine, everything. The forest has water and all the needs of our homes.”
To protect this mother, Malagufuk Village has made a deep, collective commitment to safeguarding its forest. Amos Kalami, the village head, says his community fiercely protects what he calls their greatest treasure, their ancestral forest.
Juvenile Northern Cassowary.
“We are grateful that our ancestors protected this forest for us,” Amos Kalami says. “They forbade cutting trees carelessly. Ironwood cannot be cut at all—only fallen trees may be used for village needs. That’s why Malagufuk’s forest is still intact today. We don’t want to destroy what our ancestors entrusted to us.”
Malagufuk enforces strict penalties for illegal logging or hunting animals other than pigs and deer.
“If anyone violates village rules—hunting birds-of-paradise, cassowaries, or animals like echidnas—they face a fine of 50 million rupiah,” says Amos Kalami, a penalty that’s roughly equivalent to 50% of yearly income for a middle-class Indonesian.
Despite this strong local protection, Amos Kalami says the threat of forest loss across the Klasow Valley and all of Papua remains severe.
“In 2014, suddenly there were massive surveys for oil palm,” he recalls. “We didn’t know about it beforehand. Because we were already committed to protecting this forest, we rejected them. That’s what pushed us to defend our forest even more fiercely.”
The danger posed by oil palm is not new. Agus Kalalu, a youth activist from the Mala Moi village community that lies just next to Malagufuk in the heart of the Klasow Forest, says the Moi people have long resisted plantation expansion. Kalalu has spent more than two decades campaigning across the Moi homeland, using short films to raise awareness and urge villages to embrace ecotourism instead of oil palm.
“Oil palm first came in around 2000,” Kalalu says. “Plantations were established in Segun, Klamono, and Moisegen districts. Companies made many promises, but once they were operating, there were no real benefits.”
Instead of prosperity, communities witnessed the destruction of their forests. Water sources became scarce, food harder to find, and promised jobs never materialized.
“We learned from that damage,” Kalalu says. “That’s why today, all of us in Mala Moi—the ancestral land of the Moi people—reject oil palm.”
Northern Cassowary by
Daniel López-Velasco |
Ornis Birding Expeditions / Macaulay Library
In 2021, there was a turning point. The provincial government committed to protecting remaining forests in West Papua, revoking several oil palm permits. Today, both West Papua Province and the newer Southwest Papua Province continue to uphold that commitment to forest protection.
For Kalalu, Malagufuk stands as a powerful example.
“I’m Moi and I live in Klaili. We also protect our forest,” he says. “But I truly admire Malagufuk, our neighboring village to the north. Until today, their forest remains untouched. Not a single tree has fallen by human hands. That’s what I respect most.”
Yet even as the immediate oil palm threat has eased, it has not disappeared. Plantation permits issued at the national level remain a concern. Kalalu and fellow Moi youth refuse to stay silent. They travel from village to village across Moi lands, sharing stories of the damage caused by monoculture plantations—and offering alternatives, such as ecotourism, as a sustainable source of income for Papuan communities.
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According to Amos Kalami, the village head of Malagufuk, protecting the forest has delivered real benefits for his people.
“Ecotourism proves this,” he says. “We protect the forest, we protect cassowaries, we protect our birds—and we earn income. Tourists come, they photograph our birds, our ironwood trees, our village. They take pictures, and they leave money behind.”
According to Amos Kalami, the Moi people have a duty to uphold the customary laws passed down through generations to keep their forests healthy.
“Our ancestors taught us to protect nature, because we live from it,” he says. “Protect the forest, protect the trees, protect the birds. The Moi have a commitment called
Egek
. It’s a customary prohibition—recognized by tradition and the church.”
“Certain areas cannot be used because they contain sacred sites, springs, and giant trees,” he says. “
Egek
also applies here in the Malagufuk Forest.”
According to Yance Kalami, the young hunter turned camera trapper in Malagufuk, the commitment to
Egek
is embodied by the Northern Cassowary.
“The more I learn how important cassowaries are, the more motivated I am to protect our forest—our home,” he says. “When I take my daughter, Deborah, into the forest, I think about how male cassowaries raise their chicks. I want cassowaries to survive so this forest stays intact—not only for my children, but so the whole world can benefit from Papua’s forests.”
About the Author
Wahyu Mulyono is a journalist, documentary filmmaker, and founder of the
Rekam Nusantara Foundation
, which focuses on telling impactful stories about nature, culture, and conservation in Indonesia. Over the past two decades he has written and produced stories for Mongabay, Kompas TV-Indonesia, National Geographic Indonesia, and Tempo—one of the largest-circulation newsweekly magazines in Indonesia.
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Living Bird Spring 2026—Table of Contents
Featured Articles
Tracking the Very Large, Very Elusive Star of Papua’s Forests: the Northern Cassowary
Deep in the interior rainforest, a wildlife photographer, an ornithologist, and three local Indigenous guides ventured into the realm of the Northern Cassowary on a mission to capture images of Papua’s mysterious forest giants.
Story By Wahyu Mulyono
Photography by Tim Laman
A Cattle Farm in Alabama Draws Birders for a Spectacle of Kites
The Joe family farm practices a land ethic that has brought in the birds, and now a burgeoning side business that is bringing in birders to the Black Belt of Alabama.
Photography and Interviews by Dudley Edmondson
Warblers in New Hampshire’s Forests Have Found an Ideal Way to Divvy Up Territories
New research out of the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest shows that migratory songbirds use their songs to equally allocate breeding territories amongst themselves.
By Marc Devokaitis
Why Do Nuthatches Coat Their Nest Entrances With Sap?
A simple series of experiments looked into why Red-breasted Nuthatches use sticky conifer resin to defend against nest predators and competitors.
By Rebecca Heisman
Antibodies Suggest Some Raptors May Be Developing Resistance to Avian Influenza
Evidence from blood tests taken at The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota shows that some birds of prey are beating the aggressive avian influenza virus.
By Angelina Tang
Columns & Departments
View From Sapsucker Woods: Our Shared Birds
By Ian Owens
Cornell Protects Big Red, Star of Red-tailed Hawk Cam, During Construction
By Clarissa Casper
Dark-eyed Junco Beaks Changed During COVID Shutdown in Los Angeles
By Clarissa Casper
eBird Taxonomy Update Splits Warbling Vireos, Yellow Warblers, and More
By Matthew D. Medler
Birdword: An Illustrated Guide to Some Tongue-Twisting Ornithological Terms
By Rosemary Mosco
Gallery: Birds With Borders
Artwork by C. F. Payne; Text by Marc Devokaitis
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