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The Sulawesi Moist Forests have a higher number of endemic mammals than any other place in Asia, along with many endemic birds and plants. This Global 200 ecoregion is made up of these terrestrial ecoregions: Sulawesi lowland rain forests; Sulawesi montane rain forests If you're interested in all kinds of wildlife--from the slithering to the screeching to the snorting--then a visit to Sulawesi is for you. Among the wild creatures you’d find here are the reticulated python, the bare-eyed myna bird, and the Sulawesi babirusa. You'd also find monkeys, bats, butterflies, lizards, and much, much more.
If you traveled among the islands of Indonesia, you'd discover that many of them have been widely deforested. But that's not the case on Sulawesi. With steep slopes and fewer commercially valuable trees, some forests still remain in the mountains. Extensive moist forests still cover more than 50 percent of the island, providing a habitat for a wealth of wild species. Unusual mammals are particularly plentiful on Sulawesi. During the daylight hours, moor macaques and black-crested macaques--two rare kinds of monkeys--swing through the treetops. Sulawesian palm civets feast on fruit and small mammals. At night, small primates called Sulawesi tarsiers climb through the treetops, dining on insects. The Celebes Rousette bat and the Sulawesi barebacked fruit bat fly out to feed. In addition to all these wondrous mammals, Sulawesi harbors hundreds of colorful butterflies, including the Sulawesi tree nymph and the swallowtail butterfly. Sulawesi hornbills gather in great noisy flocks to feed on fruits and insects. And henna-tailed jungle-flycatchers sing in a faint jumble of high notes, trills, and whistles.
Although the forests of Sulawesi have so far been left relatively intact, logging pressures are increasing dramatically. In addition, it's becoming more and more common for people to burn the forest to clear land for agriculture.
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