Some of these mountains in northern Mozambique have never been studied by scientists until now. The British government funded Darwin Initiative has sponsored a series of expeditions to five northern Mozambique(莫桑比克) mountains.

Scientists have made numerous discoveries including a very colorful Hemipteran bug(蝽、椿象), and two species of snakes. Last month, the Darwin Initiative team explored the approximately 100 square kilometer Mount Inago. Africa Project Coordinator Julian Bayliss says there is no record of any scientist visiting Mount Inago before.

“When biologists visit an area and they generally, you know, focus on particular groups, they collect, they record. But they catalogue their finds and this is, these are usually published through scientific journals, or historical evidence or reference collections are stored in, in natural history museums or herbariums(植物标本馆), you know, across the world. And there is no record; there is no evidence of anybody coming to Mount Inago before to assess the biology of this mountain range.”

This entire area has suffered heavy deforestation(森林退化) due to human encroachment(入侵) caused by 15 years of civil war in Mozambique that ended in 1992.

Despite the loss of biodiversity-rich forest, the expedition has served a valuable purpose of documenting for the first time what species are found here.

Two butterfly experts are part of the expedition, and 250 specimens comprising about 75 species of butterflies had been collected. Butterfly expert Colin Congen says despite the forestdegradation, they are making new finds.

“Bearing in mind that this, that the forests here are fragmented, and very much degraded. I think it’s amazing how much stuff there is here. We’re pulling in new stuff every day.”

One discovery is this butterfly, a new sub-species for Mozambique.

“Oh, yeah, there we go.”

All the river crabs collected from the five Mozambique mountains have turned out to be new species. The researchers are collecting specimens to send to South Africa for DNA analysis.

“We have a nice adult-size crab here. Um, it’s a male.”

Lincoln Fishpool is believed to be the first ornithologist(观鸟学家) on Mount Inago. He says this East Coast Akalat(东海滨阿卡拉鸲) is one bird species rapidly heading for extinction. Fishpool says this expedition is a curtain call(谢幕) for threatened forest birds.

"Here on Inago there is relatively little forest, certainly very little forest left, and what is seems to be going quickly. So this expedition is something of a requiem(安魂曲) for the forest birds."

While the outlook for species dependent on forests is poor, discoveries of new crabs, butterflies and other species make this a worthwhile expedition. The scientists hope their discoveries will spur the Mozambique government toward more conservation measures for these isolated mountains.