Bukit Manjai Valley Becomes A Place For "flying Dragon" Capital

Draco cornutus is usually called a flying bird or dragon that lives in the tropical Rain Forest Biodiversity Park in the Bukit Manjai Valley (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - Tropical Rain Forest Biodiversity Park in Bukit Manjai Valley, Mandiangin, Banjar Regency, South Kalimantan became the place of Draco cornutus's life, commonly called a kite or flying dragon, a type of small lizard that is now increasingly difficult to find.

"As long as we observed the behavior of the flying dragon with the Indonesian Biological Young Saintis Forum team, we found five draco cornputuses scattered in this tropical rainforest area," said Ferry F. Hoesain, founder of the Tropical Rain Forest Biodiversity Park in the Bukit Manjai Valley, quoting Antara, Monday.

Ferry said there are about 40 species of Draco cornputus in the world and 21 of them have been identified in Indonesia, including those found in the Bukit Manjai Valley.

Draco corndekan is an endemic Kalimantan reptile, including in the family of agamidae lizards that live in tropical forests.

His body measuring 25 to 30 centimeters, has a pair of wings behind his front leg in the form of a patagial membrane.

This wing is actually an elongated rib bone covered in thin skin that allows it to fly sliding from one tree to another, like a flying dragon that exists in ancient mythology stories.

Ferry explained that Draco corndekan is an arboreal animal because he prefers to live in a large tree canopy that provides a lot of food, such as small insects.

The unique behavior of male draco in addition to being able to glide flying, also often develops bright and pointed yellow dewlaps to maintain its territory, as well as attract the attention of the antenna.

Although this draco lives on trees, female draco will occasionally descend to the ground to lay eggs.

Draco the female digs a hole and then places the egg in the hole and closes it.

The female will guard the nest for some time to ensure that the eggs are far from predatory disturbances and after that back up the tree.

Ferry admitted that the existence of these unique reptiles in nature was threatened due to land conversion, many trees were cut down to be used as residential areas, plantations and mining to forest fires and poaching to be used as pet reptiles.

As a conservation effort, his party seeks to acquire land to be used as a Biodiversity park as an area to protect Indonesia's biological wealth.

"Currently we have two Biodiversity parks and one wet land arboretum," he said.