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| North Maluku |
North Maluku (Indonesian: Maluku Utara) is a province of northeastern Indonesia. It covers the northern part of the Maluku Islands, which are split between it and the province of Maluku. Maluku province used to cover the entire group. The planned provincial capital is Sofifi, on Halmahera the largest island, but the current capital and largest population center is the island of Ternate while the largest settlement on Halmahera is Tobelo.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the islands of North Maluku were the original "Spice Islands". At the time, the region was the sole source of cloves. The Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and local sultanates including Ternate and Tidore fought each other for control of the lucrative trade in these spices. Clove trees have since been transported and replanted all around the world and the demand for clove from the original spice islands has ceased, greatly reducing North Maluku's international importance.
The population of North Maluku is 1,035,478 (according to the 2010 Census), making it one of the least populous provinces in Indonesia.
The islands of North Maluku are mostly of volcanic origin, with the volcanoes of Dukono on Halmahera, Gamalama on Ternate still active and the whole of Tidore consisting of a large stratovolcano. The rainforests of Halmahera, Morotai, the Obi Islands, the Bacan islands and other islands of North Maluku have been described by the World Wildlife Fund as the Halmahera rain forests ecoregion and are home to a number of unique plant and animal species unique to the islands, which are in the Wallacea transition zone containing a mixture of species of Asian and Australasian origin. The predominant trees of the forest are Anisoptera thurifera, Hopea gregaria, Hopea iriana, Shorea assamica, Shorea montigena, Shorea selanica, and Vatica rassak.
The endemic mammals found here include the Obi Mosaic-tailed Rat (Melomys obiensis), Masked Flying Fox (Pteropus personatus), and three arboreal marsupials, the Ornate (Phalanger ornatus), Rothschild's (P. rothschildi), Blue-eyed (P. matabiru) and Gebe (P. alexandrae) cuscuses. There are over two hundred different birds on the islands, twenty-six of which are endemic, a large number for this small island group. The endemics include four birds which are the only species in their genera, including the elusive Invisible Rail (Habroptila wallacii), the White-streaked Friarbird (Melitograis gilolensis), and two birds of paradise, the Paradise-crow (Lycocorax pyrrhopterus) and Wallace's Standardwing (Semioptera wallacii). The islands are also home to the largest bee in the world, Wallace's giant bee (Megachile pluto).
The islands have an tropical rainforest climate.
Most of the natural forest remains on these mountainous islands although much of the coastal and lowland areas have been cleared for clove planting since the sixteenth century, especially on the islands of Ternate and Tidore, while logging has occurred more recently on Halmahera and Morotai.
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