Myanmar shares extraordinary biodiversity of Mekong: WWF
Myanmar Times, December 22 - 28, 2008
By Thomas Kean
MORE than 1000 new plant and animal species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong region in the past decade, including 96 new species in Myanmar, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
A WWF report released last week, First Contact in the Greater Mekong, says 1068 species were discovered or newly identified between 1997 and 2007 in the Greater Mekong region, which comprises sections of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Chinas Yunnan province.
The new species include the Laotian rock rat, which was thought to be extinct for 11 million years before biologists discovered it in a local food market, and the worlds largest huntsman spider, which can grow up to 30 centimetres.
Stuart Chapman, conservation director of WWFs Greater Mekong Program, said the extraordinary wealth of biodiversity in the Mekong River region is second only to the Amazon.
We dont know of any other place on the planet that has the same rate of discovery [of new species], Mr Chapman said. This highlights the importance of the Greater Mekong region in terms of world conservation and world biodiversity.
Mr Chapman said this diversity was under threat because of the regions economic growth particularly infrastructure development, logging and the wildlife trade and called on governments to introduce better environmental planning.
The Greater Mekong is not only a hotspot for biodiversity conservation; its also at the frontier of economic development. There are a series of economic corridors that criss-cross this region that are bringing infrastructure to many places, but in some cases this isnt being done with good environmental planning, he said.
What needs to happen now is that governments of this region the six governments need to work together and formalise a treaty that ensures good environmental management which at the centre of any development planning.
Many of the 96 species discovered in Myanmar are unique to the country, while some can also be found in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.
Three of the 15 new mammal species uncovered by biologists working in the Greater Mekong region can be found in Myanmar, including two varieties of woolly bat (Kerivoula kachinensis and Kerivoula titania) and the leaf deer (Muntiacus putaoensis).
The latter was discovered in 1999 by American biologist Alan Rabinowitz near Putao, in Kachin State, and, at between 60cm and 80cm, it is the worlds smallest species of deer.
Fourteen new lizard species, six types of snakes and two varieties of turtle were also uncovered here.
The super-aggressive Myanmar spitting cobra (Naja mandalayensis), which was discovered in the Mandalay area in 2000 by California Academy of Sciences herpetologist Joseph Slowinski, was the first new species of cobra to be described since 1922.
Slowinski later died on an expedition to a remote section of northern Kachin State after he was bitten by a many-banded krait (Bungarus multicinctus), the deadliest land serpent in Asia. The Red River krait (Bungarus slowinskii) discovered in Vietnam in 2005 was later named in his honour and also features in the WWF report. |
