Wallacea’s island stairway bred the Komodo dragon
The Lesser Sunda Islands—Nusa Tenggara in Indonesian usage—step from Bali to Timor and the Tanimbar group across Wallacea, with only Bali west of the Wallace Line on the Sunda Shelf. Deep trenches between small islands limited biotic mixing and favoured endemics such as the Komodo dragon.
West-to-east mains include Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Sumba, Timor, and the Alor and Barat Daya clusters; eastern Timor and Atauro belong to Timor-Leste, the rest mostly to Indonesia. A northern volcanic chain (Bali through Wetar) still hosts active peaks like Rinjani, while southern islands such as Sumba and Timor rose differently from continental fragments and accretion. Two plates collide here, making the region among Earth’s most geologically restless. Geologists’ explanations of how the islands formed kept changing well into the late twentieth century.
Unlike broad Java or Sumatra, these islets are separated by trenches that strand flora and fauna into local experiments. Bali is the odd one out: it lies in the Indomalayan realm, was once joined to mainland Asia, and hosted Asian elephants and the now-extinct Bali tiger. The rest divide into several ecoregions, with deciduous forests on the northern chain from Lombok and Sumbawa to Flores and Alor, where tall Podocarpus conifers and Engelhardia trees shade lianas and orchids on higher slopes. Sumba forms its own forest region, as do Timor with Wetar, Rote and Savu, while the damper Barat Daya, Tanimbar and Kai islands carry moist deciduous forest.
Over half the original vegetation has gone to rice fields, other crops, settlements and the fires that followed clearing. Sumbawa alone retains a sizeable tract of untouched forest, and the islands of Padar, Rincah and Komodo now form Komodo National Park.
Small islands like these are especially exposed to outside forces, and development pressure is rising in ways that are not always foreseen. Indonesia as a whole is rich in resources, but those of Nusa Tenggara are limited and specialised, and skilled workers are scarce.
Source: Lesser Sunda Islands
