Naturalists have discovered eight new species of orchids in Papua New Guinea in the western Pacific, the conservationist group World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said in Germany Monday, according to dpa. The WWF said Papua New Guinea is home to 3,000 different species of orchids, the greatest variety of any country. WWF naturalists have collected more than 300 species in the past eight years in the Kikori region near Lake Kutubu in the south. The group is awaiting verification on as many as 20 other potentially new orchids. The tropical forests of the region are also home to a wealth of bird species, including birds of paradise and giant cassowaries. Roland Melisch, a WWF expert in the German city of Frankfurt, said the "sad reality" was that species of flora and fauna were still becoming extinct in the world before there was time to discover them. WWF estimated that 70 species of orchids have been wiped out in Papua New Guinea because of illegal logging, although the species still survive in the western, Indonesian part of the divided island.
