Biodiversity
Plants
87 new species discovered in VN
Việt Nam accounts for 87 of the 163 new species of animals and plants discovered in the Greater Mekong region, according to a report released on December 19 by the World Wide Fund for Nature. A new frog measuring less than 3cm long, which took ...
Rainbow snake, tiny frog among new Mekong species
A rainbow-headed snake, a tiny frog and a lizard with dragon-like horns are among more than 150 new species confirmed by scientists last year in the ecologically diverse but threatened Mekong region, researchers said on Monday. Winding its way from the Tibetan plateau through the ...
Dire threat to famed Côn Đảo flora, fauna
The famous Côn Đảo Island’s ecosystem and its biodiversity is seriously threatened by overexploitation and low environmental awareness of visitors and locals. Concerned officials as well as residents are calling for strong protective measures that can prevent the slide into irrecoverable loss. “The commercial hunting ...
Environmental and social monitoring receives World Bank support
The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and its development partners organised a review of the Second Lao Environment and Social Project in 2016 and planning meeting for next year’s works. The concerned departments at the ministry highlighted the key achievements of 13 sub-projects under ...
Last chance to see: paddling through time on the Mekong
Humility is a rare commodity in the era of the smartphone, selfies and carefully–coiffed digital personas. Gratitude, too, is unusual in the modern world where a sense of entitlement seems all pervasive. Despite most of us being aware enough to acknowledge that all human beings ...
Small-scale farming threatens rainforests in Sumatra
Rainforest cover in the Indonesian archipelago has since declined rapidly in recent years giving way to large-scale plantations of rubber and oil palm. A recent study published in Nature Communications finds that small-scale farming can be just as damaging to biodiversity as the plantations, since ...
Military training areas can be important wildlife refuges: new study
Bombs and biodiversity can go hand in hand, a new study has found. Military training areas — used for the training of armed forces — can maintain biodiversity and even support species threatened with extinction, despite years of repeated bombing, fires and other disturbances, scientists ...
Radical reform of ‘outdated’ environmental laws urged
Academics and legal experts on November 9 called for radical reforms of decades-old environmental laws, with public participation to ensure the rights of all citizens to live in healthy surroundings. The call was issued as the Law Reform Commission and the Good Governance for Social Development ...
Chàm Island to protect biodiversity
The Centre of Biodiversity Conservation, GreenViet and the Management Board of Chàm Island has inked an Memorandum of Understanding on the protection of flora and fauna in the forest of the island. The Management Board said the MoU will allow surveying of the current terrestrial plants ...
ADB supports sustainable biodiversity management
The Asian Development Bank has approved US$12.8 million in additional financing for the ongoing Biodiversity Conservation Corridors Project in Laos. The grant assistance is sourced from ADB’s Strategic Climate Fund, Forest Investment Programme. The grant agreement was signed in Vientiane on October 18, inked by Deputy Minister ...
