The Wildlife Conservation and Nature Reserves

A vast archipelago with a total of 17,508 islands has made Indonesia the home of a large variety of plant and animal life, both terrestrial and aquatic. As the land mass is divided into islands, often mountainous, many terrestrial species are endemic, originating and living in one particular island or part of a larger island. Zoologists divide Indonesia into three zones. Zone I, nearest the Asian continent, was defined by British Naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace in the 1 9th century.
Climate did not appear to be the deciding factor in his theory Wallace postulated that because the islands of Sumatra, Java and Kalimantan were joined to Asia by the now submerged Sunda Shelf, the Indo Malayan fauna had not spread beyond the shelf's eastern boundary which came to be known as the Wallace Line.
Zone 11, is the intermediate zone between the Indo-Malayan zone and Zone 111 where
Australian animal and plant life predominate. Sulawesi, in particular has an unusually high
proportion of endemic species and there is even a marked difference between
the flora and avifauna of Zone I and Zone III.
In Zone 111, both the fauna and flora are predominantly Australian in character and affinity, as these islands share the same continental shelves, the Sahul Shelves with Australia.