Lake Be Malae
lagoon in East Timor
Lake Be Malae, also spelt Bemalae, is a 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) lagoon in the district of Bobonaro on the north-west coast of Timor-Leste, a country occupying the eastern end of the island of Timor in the Lesser Sunda Islands of Wallacea.
Description
The lake is a broad and shallow expanse of saline water and mudflats which sometimes largely dries up. Its margins are vegetated by mangroves and dry forest. Its outlet is a winding, mangrove-lined channel leading to the sea.
Birds
The lake and its surrounds have been identified by BirdLife International as a 28,000 ha Important Bird Area because they support populations of bar-necked cuckoo-doves, pink-headed imperial pigeons, jonquil parrots, streak-breasted honeyeaters, plain gerygones, fawn-breasted whistlers, green figbirds, olive-brown orioles, buff-banded thicketbirds, white-bellied bush chats and flame-breasted sunbirds.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lake Be Malae” is lagoon in East Timor. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lake, Malae and lagoon, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1795008. Authority coordinates are -8.867, 125.000. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lake Be Malae” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.