Biodiversity
Animals
Some 331 species are endangered in Myanmar
More than 5,000 species are endangered in Asia, around 800 in the Greater Mekong region alone. Plants and wildlife are used to produce traditional medicines, clothes and accessories. Hunting and poaching are practiced in about 70 pe cent of sanctuaries. In Southeast Asia and the ...
EU study boost fight against illegal wildlife trade in Mekong region
The European Union has launched an intensive study about the illegal wildlife trade in the Greater Mekong Region and its threat to biodiversity. The report, entitled “Larger than Tigers”, hopes to encourage the Greater Mekong countries, which include Myanmar, to intensify efforts against the illegal wildlife ...
A new method to help track the Mekong’s rare wildlife
Scientists are rapidly developing new DNA-methods to identify what kind of life is present in rivers, lakes and the ocean. Advocates of the method claim that it has the potential to revolutionise the way environmental monitoring is done. Keep reading ...
Asia’s Environmental Apocalypse 2019?
This year’s environmental news kicked off in grisly fashion: a Vietnamese poaching gang recording one of its members straddling and punching a snared and presumably dead tiger (the Thai authorities say they have caught the perpetrators) in one of Thailand’s protected areas. Thailand has always seemed, to ...
Thai police bust animal trafficking gang
Thai police seized more than 1,600 bear claws and other animal parts in central Thailand’s Ayutthaya Province. Three suspects, including one Lao national and two from Vietnam were nabbed during the operation, according to reports. Keep reading ...
WWF-Cambodia announces new ‘accurate’ survey of reptiles
To help conserve the critically endangered Siamese crocodile, WWF-Cambodia has announced it will conduct a survey this year to accurately record the number of the reptiles left in the wild in the Kingdom’s Eastern Plains Landscape. The Siamese crocodile was once widespread throughout much of ...
Thai project offers hope for endangered Indochinese tigers
AS ON of the last refuges of Indochinese tigers, Thailand is working to protect the endangered big cats from poachers. A tiger conservation centre was launched last Friday in Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, where forest rangers will be trained to track the endangered big ...
The last 92 Irrawaddy dolphins in Mekong River may not survive
Experts are concerned that the Mekong dolphin is unlikely to survive Cambodia’s modernisation as a new dam is planned. It says, “building dams destroy habitats” and lists threats to dolphins, including pollutions and gillnets. It looks like an insect-eaten papyrus. The Irrawaddy dolphin is a critically endangered ...
Nathan A. Thompson
157 ’new' Mekong species discovered
A bat that could be a member of an American boy band, a gibbon with a Star Wars name and a toad straight from Tolkien’s Middle Earth are among the 157 newly discovered species in the Greater Mekong region described by the world’s scientists in ...
Forum to protect Eld’s deer
Around 50 officers and wildlife conservationists from China, India, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia gathered in Phnom Penh for a workshop intended as a forum to share information to help provide better protection for the Eld’s deer. The species is now a rare and ...
