Report: Mekong region 'a biological treasure trove'
(Read article summary)A striped rabbit, a rodent thought to have gone extinct 11 million years ago, a frog with green blood and turquoise bones, and a hot-pink millipede that secretes cyanide are just a few of the new species that have been discovered in the Greater Mekong Region of Southeast Asia in just the last decade, according to a new report by the WWF.
A striped rabbit, a rodent thought to have gone extinct 11 million years ago, a frog with green blood and turquoise bones, and a hot-pink millipede that secretes cyanide are just a few of the new species that have been discovered in the Greater Mekong Region of Southeast Asia in just the last decade, according to a new report by the WWF.
The report, titled First Contact in the Greater Mekong [PDF] details the 1,068 species newly identified by scientists between 1997 and 2007 in areas around the Mekong River. The river, the world's 12th longest, flows through Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and the southern Chinese province of Yunnan.
The species identified include 519 plants, 279 fish, 88 frogs, 88 spiders, 46 lizards, 22 snakes, 15 mammals, 4 birds, 4 turtles, 2 salamanders, and a toad.
“It doesn’t get any better than this,” said Stuart Chapman, director of WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme, in a press release. “We thought discoveries of this scale were confined to the history books. This reaffirms the Greater Mekong’s place on the world map of conservation priorities.”
