Biodiversity - GMS-EOC

Kouprey (upper left); saola (lowerleft); Indochinese tiger (right)where field primatologists had also identified wildpopulations of the same description in a regionoccupied by red- and black-shanked monkeys. Wildpopulations of the three doucs have been reduced tosmall numbers by habitat loss and hunting. WhileCambodia and the Lao PDR may have more sizeablepopulations of the red-shanked and black-shankeddouc, the newly discovered Pygathrix cinereus isknown only from Viet Nam and is considered themost critically endangered species.Indochinese Tiger(Panthera tigris corbetti)The Indochinese tiger is found in Cambodia,southern PRC, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, andViet Nam. It is one of only five surviving tigersubspecies in the world, all of which are endangered.Only about 1,200–1,800 Indochinese tigers are leftin the wild. Tigers thrive in remote forests and hilly,mountainous terrain. As predators, tigers alsodepend on other animals like wild pigs, cattle, anddeer to survive. Habitat destruction, along with theloss of these prey species, threatens the tiger’ssurvival. Another big threat comes from the ancientbelief that a tiger’s body parts can give humans thepotency of this animal.Kouprey (Bos sauveli)Its name literally means “forest bull” in Khmer,but the kouprey is more commonly known as theCambodian forest ox. First discovered in 1937, thekouprey is a gray forest ox with frayed horns and along dewlap. Koupreys are found in small numbersin northern and eastern Cambodia, and have alsobeen known to exist in southern Lao PDR, easternThailand, and western Viet Nam, although sightingsanywhere are rare. Koupreys inhabit low, rollinghills with patches of dry forest, near denser monsoonforests. They live in herds of up to 20, grazing inopen areas by day and entering the forest for shelterfrom predators and sunlight.The kouprey has always been rare. However,the destruction of its habitat by slash-and-burnagriculture, logging, and warfare, along withhunting and disease, has severely affected it. By 1970,there were fears that the species might have becomeextinct. But the kouprey has been observed since inseveral places. Although the animal itself has notbeen seen since 1988, its tracks and skeletal remainshave been spotted, leading many to believe thatkoupreys still exist, but probably only about 100–300 of them.Saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis)The saola, also known as the Vu Quong ox, isan endangered, nocturnal forest-dwelling oxweighing about 100 kg. Its habitat is the densemontane forests in the Annamite Mountains, whichrun through the Lao PDR and Viet Nam. It is thoughtto be restricted to a 4,000-km 2 area along the borderbetween Viet Nam and the Lao PDR. The saola isgenerally considered the greatest animal discoveryof recent times. First documented in Viet Nam in1992, it is so different from any other known speciesthat a separate genus had to be created for it. Theclassification of the saola has generated somecontroversy; different physiological and geneticstudies classify it with goats, antelope, or cattle. Only11 saolas have ever been caught. Much of what isknown about them comes from villagers’ tales andunearthed skeletons. The saola seems to prefer theedges of wet lowland and montane evergreen forests.Villagers say that it eats the leaves of fig trees andother bushes along riverbanks. The saola stays athigher elevations during the wetter summer season,when streams at these altitudes have plenty of water,and moves down to the lowlands in winter, whenthe mountain streams dry up. They are said to travelin groups of two or three animals, rarely up to six orseven. The animal has been classified as endangeredby IUCN. Hunting and the loss of forest habitat dueto logging and conversion to farmland threaten itssurvival.78 Greater Mekong Subregion Atlas of the Environment