ENVIRONMENT & WILDLIFE
FLORA & FAUNA
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cobra, king cobra (hamadryad), banded krait, Malayan pit viper, green
viper and Russell’s viper. This makes Myanmar home to more venomous
snakes than any other country in the world.
Myanmar is rich in birdlife, with an estimated 687 resident and migrat-
ing species. Coastal and inland waterways of the delta and southern pen-
insula are especially important habitats for Southeast Asian waterfowl.Endangered Species
Of some 8233 known breeding species (of which 7000 are plants) in
Myanmar, 132 of these (animals, birds and plants) are endangered, in-
cluding the fl ying squirrel, tiger and three-striped box turtle.
There are believed to be anything from 4000 to 10,000 Asiatic el-
ephants living in the wild throughout Myanmar. Their numbers are
steadily dropping, primarily due to logging, which leads to habitat de-
struction. Ironically, domesticated or captive elephants are widely used
by the logging industry to knock down the forests on which their wild
cousins depend. However, the creature’s usefulness could be its very
saviour: Myanmar has the largest population of domesticated elephants
(around 4000) in the world.
Both the one-horned (Javan) rhinoceros and the Asiatic two-horned
(Sumatran) rhinoceros are believed to survive in very small numbers
near the Thai border in Kayin State. The rare red panda (or cat bear) was
last sighted in northern Myanmar in the early 1960s but is thought to
still live in Kachin State forests above 6500ft.
Deforestation poses the greatest threat to wildlife, but even in areas
where habitat loss isn’t a problem, hunting threatens to wipe out the
rarer animal species. Wildlife laws are seldom enforced and poaching
remains a huge problem in Myanmar.SAVING THE BIG CATSA rare example of wildlife conservation has been Myanmar’s establishment of the
Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve, which was doubled in size in 2010 to 8452 sq miles. Con-
servationists estimate that as few as 50 tigers survive in the area that could in theory
support several hundreds more.
Instrumental in helping establish the reserve was Dr Alan Rabinowitz, president and
CEO of the US-based NGO Panthera (www.panthera.org) and a former executive director
at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). In a 2008 interview in the Myanmar Times,
Rabinowitz applauded the government for creating the park and helping to make eco-
tourism to the area a viable alternative to killing tigers for illegal trade. ‘If tourists come
and spend money to see wildlife, then the local people start feeling that wildlife is more
valuable alive than dead’, he said.
Even though local hunters get a fraction of the $100,000 or so that can be made
when a tiger is butchered into separate parts, the amounts are large enough for villagers
to build a house or make other major changes to their lives.
Another step forward has been a preliminary agreement with the ethnic minority Wa
people who control the border areas of northeast Myanmar to stamp out the sale of
tiger and other big-cat parts in markets in border towns such as Mong La and Tachileik.
A 2010 report prepared by the wildlife-trade monitoring group Traf fic (www.traffi c.org)
showed that such items as tiger and leopard skin, bones, paws, penises and teeth were
commonly available and consumed mainly by Chinese traders. Tiger bone wine is ap-
parently a popular drink with those out for sex in these ‘wild east’ border towns.
Panthera is also spearheading the Tiger Corridor Initiative, a cross-border,
4660-mile-long ‘genetic corridor’ for tigers stretching from Bhutan to Malaysia, with a
large part of the corridor passing through Myanmar. The idea has been presented to the
UN and endorsed by the King of Bhutan.An excellent
resource on
feathered friends
in Myanmar is
provided by
http://www.birdlife
indochina.org.To find out more
about the plight
of elephants in
Myanmar, see the
report compiled
in 2006 for Eleaid
(www.eleaid.
com).