2019 Environmental Review: Southeast Asia
The year—and the decade—in environmental terms, is coming to its end, with some species and entire ecosystems in their death throes. For starters, Malaysia recently lost its last Sumatran rhino, the poaching of Sabah’s pygmy elephants is rapidly increasing, Australia’s koala bears are being incinerated in wildfires, dugongs are dying in Thailand, Laos has lost all of its tigers, orangutans are being shot up and blinded by bullets, and the Mekong River is being strangled by hydroelectric dams in Laos and China.
A smorgasbord of rare and spectacular species—and the habitats in which they live—are being erased. Nowhere on Earth can the effects of man’s dominance over the planet be seen with greater clarity than in Southeast Asia.
Gregory McCann
