Huon Peninsula is a large rugged peninsula on the island of New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...

 in Morobe Province

Morobe Province

Morobe Province is a province on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea. The provincial capital, and largest city, is Lae. The province covers 34,500 km², including 719 km² maritime area, with a population of 539,725...

, eastern Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

. It is named after French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 explorer Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec

Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec

Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec was an 18th century French navigator. In September 1791 he was chosen to command the Espérance on the Bruni d'Entrecasteaux expedition to find the lost expedition of Jean-François de La Pérouse. The expedition explored Australia and the South Pacific...

 who discovered it along with his personal assistant and porter, Henry Ole. The peninsula is dominated by the steep Saruwaged

Saruwaged Range

The Saruwaged Range is a mountain range on the Huon Peninsula in Morobe Province, north-eastern Papua New Guinea...

 and Finisterre

Finisterre Range

Finisterre Range is a mountain range in north-eastern Papua New Guinea, at . The unnamed highest point of the range , which is ranked 45th in the world by prominence, is usually quoted at 4,175 m, but SRTM data suggests that it is nearer to 4,120 m...

 and Cromwell Mountains. The nearest large town is the Morobe provincial capital Lae

Lae

Lae, the capital of Morobe Province, is the second-largest city in Papua New Guinea. It is located at the start of the Highlands Highway which is the main land transport corridor from the Highlands region to the coast...

 to the south, while settlements on the north coast include the former German town of Finschhafen

Finschhafen

Finschhafen is a district on the northeast coast of the Morobe province of Papua New Guinea. It is named after the port of the same name.The port was discovered in 1884 by the German researcher Otto Finsch. In 1885 the German colony of German New Guinea created a town on the site and named it...

, the district capital of Wasu

Wasu, Papua New Guinea

Wasu is a city in Papua New Guinea. It is the capital of Tewae-Siassi District in Morobe Province, and is located on the Huon Peninsula.Wasu also constitutes one end of the most difficult commercial air journey in the world. To get from Wasu to RAF Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands requires...

, Malalamai and Saidor where there is the WWII Saidor Airport

Saidor Airport

Saidor Airport is an airport in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. . It is a general aviation airport located at the coast near Saidor, near Saul Point with Dekys Bay to the east and the Bismarck Sea to the north.-History:...

.

The area was the site of the Huon Peninsula campaign

Huon Peninsula campaign

The Huon Peninsula campaign was a series of battles in the New Guinea campaign of the Second World War. Australian forces assaulted Japanese bases on the Huon Peninsula....

 of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, in 1943-44 as Japanese troops retreating from Lae fought their way over the Finisterre Mountains to Madang

Madang

Madang is the capital of Madang Province and is a town with a population of 27,420 on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. It was first settled by the Germans in the 19th century....

 on the north coast.

Flora and fauna

The rainforests that cover these remote mountains provide habitats for many birds and animals and have been designated the Huon Peninsula Montane Rain Forests ecoregion

Ecoregion

An ecoregion , sometimes called a bioregion, is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than an ecozone and larger than an ecosystem. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and contain characteristic, geographically distinct assemblages of natural...

. The rainforest of the hillsides consists of shorter trees and more herbs than you would find in lowland rainforests around the world, with predominant species of tree including Pometia, Canarium

Canarium

Canarium is a genus of about 75 species of tropical and subtropical trees in the family Burseraceae, native to tropical Africa, southern Asia, and Australia, from southern Nigeria east to Madagascar, Mauritius, India, southern China, Indonesia and the Philippines...

, Anisoptera

Anisoptera (tree)

Anisoptera is a genus of plant in family Dipterocarpaceae. The name Anisoptera is derived from Greek and describes the unequal fruit calyx lobes. It contains ten species distributed from Chittagong to New Guinea . Eight out of the ten species are currently listed on the IUCN redlist...

, Cryptocarya

Cryptocarya

Cryptocarya is a genus of evergreen trees belonging to the Laurel family, Lauraceae. The genus includes more than 350 species, distributed through the Neotropic, Afrotropic, Indomalaya, and Australasia ecozones.-Overview:...

 laurels, and Terminalia

Terminalia (plant)

Terminalia is a genus of large trees of the flowering plant family Combretaceae, comprising around 100 species distributed in tropical regions of the world. This genus gets it name from Latin terminus, referring to the fact that the leaves appear at the very tips of the shoots.Trees of this genus...

, while the higher slopes have thicker forests of yet smaller trees and the higher slopes of the Cromwell Range in particular hold the best-prseved large forest of Dacrydium

Dacrydium

Dacrydium is a genus of conifers belonging to the podocarp family Podocarpaceae. Sixteen species of evergreen dioecious trees and shrubs are presently recognized. The genus was first described by Solander in 1786, and formerly included many more species, which were divided into sections A, B, and C...

 conifers in the southern hemisphere.

The mammals include the endangered Matschie's Tree-kangaroo

Matschie's Tree-kangaroo

Matschie's Tree-kangaroo , also known as the Huon Tree-kangaroo is a tree-kangaroo native to the Huon Peninsula of North Eastern New Guinea...

 and other tree-kangaroo

Tree-kangaroo

Tree-kangaroos are macropods adapted for life in trees. They are found in the rainforests of New Guinea, far northeastern Queensland, and nearby islands. Although most are found in mountainous areas, several species also occur in lowlands, such as the aptly named Lowlands Tree-kangaroo...

s, while the birds include many of typical Australasia

Australasia

Australasia is a region of Oceania comprising Australia, New Zealand, the island of New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term was coined by Charles de Brosses in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes...

n families including Bowerbird

Bowerbird

Bowerbirds make up the bird family Ptilonorhynchidae. The family has 20 species in eight genera. These are medium-sized passerines, ranging from the Golden Bowerbird to the Great Bowerbird...

s, Australian Robin

Petroicidae

The bird family Petroicidae includes roughly 45 species in about 15 genera. All are endemic to Australasia: New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand and numerous Pacific Islands as far east as Samoa. For want of an accurate common name, the family is often called the Australasian robins. Within the...

s, Honeyeater

Honeyeater

The honeyeaters are a large and diverse family of small to medium sized birds most common in Australia and New Guinea, but also found in New Zealand, the Pacific islands as far east as Samoa and Tonga, and the islands to the north and west of New Guinea known as Wallacea...

s and Birds of Paradise. There is one endemic butterfly. Although some logging has taken place, and there is always the danger of more, the forests of the Huon Peninsula mountains are mostly undisturbed.

Conservation

The raised beach

Raised beach

A raised beach, marine terrace, or perched coastline is an emergent coastal landform. Raised beaches and marine terraces are beaches or wave-cut platforms raised above the shore line by a relative fall in the sea level ....

 coastal terraces of Huon were added to the UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

 World Heritage Tentative List on June 6th, 2006 in the Mixed (Cultural + Natural) category.

In 2009 the YUS Conservation Area

YUS Conservation Area

YUS Conservation Area is a protected area on the Huon Peninsula, Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea. It was established in 2009 as Papua New Guinea's first conservation area, and named after the Yopno, Uruwa and Som rivers that flow through it...

has been established in the northern part of the peninsula. YUS streches over 760km² and includes three rivers: Yopno, Uruwa and Som, after which it was named.