lonely-planet-myanmar-burma-11-edition

324ENVIRONMENT & WILDLIFE FLORA & FAUNASAVING THE BIG CATSA rare example of wildlife conservation has been Myanmar’s establishment of theHukaung Valley Tiger Reserve, which was doubled in size in 2010 to 8452 sq miles. Conservationistsestimate that as few as 50 tigers survive in the area that could in theorysupport several hundreds more.Instrumental in helping establish the reserve was Dr Alan Rabinowitz, president andCEO of the US-based NGO Panthera (www.panthera.org) and a former executive directorat 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 ecotourismto the area a viable alternative to killing tigers for illegal trade. ‘If tourists comeand spend money to see wildlife, then the local people start feeling that wildlife is morevaluable alive than dead’, he said.Even though local hunters get a fraction of the $100,000 or so that can be madewhen a tiger is butchered into separate parts, the amounts are large enough for villagersto build a house or make other major changes to their lives.Another step forward has been a preliminary agreement with the ethnic minority Wapeople who control the border areas of northeast Myanmar to stamp out the sale oftiger 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 Traffic (www.traffi c.org)showed that such items as tiger and leopard skin, bones, paws, penises and teeth werecommonly available and consumed mainly by Chinese traders. Tiger bone wine is apparentlya 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 alarge part of the corridor passing through Myanmar. The idea has been presented to theUN and endorsed by the King of Bhutan.An excellentresource onfeathered friendsin Myanmar isprovided bywww.birdlifeindochina.org.To find out moreabout the plightof elephants inMyanmar, see thereport compiledin 2006 for Eleaid(www.eleaid.com).cobra, king cobra (hamadryad), banded krait, Malayan pit viper, greenviper and Russell’s viper. This makes Myanmar home to more venomoussnakes than any other country in the world.Myanmar is rich in birdlife, with an estimated 687 resident and migratingspecies. Coastal and inland waterways of the delta and southern peninsulaare especially important habitats for Southeast Asian waterfowl.Endangered SpeciesOf some 8233 known breeding species (of which 7000 are plants) inMyanmar, 132 of these (animals, birds and plants) are endangered, includingthe flying squirrel, tiger and three-striped box turtle.There are believed to be anything from 4000 to 10,000 Asiatic elephantsliving in the wild throughout Myanmar. Their numbers aresteadily dropping, primarily due to logging, which leads to habitat destruction.Ironically, domesticated or captive elephants are widely usedby the logging industry to knock down the forests on which their wildcousins depend. However, the creature’s usefulness could be its verysaviour: 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 numbersnear the Thai border in Kayin State. The rare red panda (or cat bear) waslast sighted in northern Myanmar in the early 1960s but is thought tostill live in Kachin State forests above 6500ft.Deforestation poses the greatest threat to wildlife, but even in areaswhere habitat loss isn’t a problem, hunting threatens to wipe out therarer animal species. Wildlife laws are seldom enforced and poachingremains a huge problem in Myanmar.