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LAOS
Laos Forest Figures
Forest CoverTotal forest area: 16,142,000 ha % of land area: 69.9%
Primary forest cover: 1,490,000 ha % of land area: 6.5% % total forest area: 9.2%
Deforestation Rates, 2000-2005Annual change in forest cover: -78,000 ha Annual deforestation rate: -0.5% Change in defor. rate since '90s: 4.5% Total forest loss since 1990: -1,172,000 ha Total forest loss since 1990:-6.8%
Primary or "Old-growth" forests Annual loss of primary forests: n/a Annual deforestation rate: n/a Change in deforestation rate since '90s: n/a Primary forest loss since 1990: n/a Primary forest loss since 1990:0.0%
Forest ClassificationPublic: 100% Private: 0% Other: 0% Use Production: 21.6% Protection: 54.7% Conservation: 23.5% Social services: 0.2% Multiple purpose: n/a None or unknown: n/a
Forest Area BreakdownTotal area: 16,142,000 ha Primary: 1,490,000 ha Modified natural: 14,428,000 ha Semi-natural: n/a Production plantation: 223,000 ha Production plantation: 1,000 ha
PlantationsPlantations, 2005: 224,000 ha % of total forest cover: 1.4% Annual change rate (00-05): 25,000,000 ha
Carbon storageAbove-ground biomass: 2,342 M t Below-ground biomass: 632 M t
Area annually affected byFire: 100,000 ha Insects: n/a Diseases: n/a
Number of tree species in IUCN red listNumber of native tree species: 1,457 Critically endangered: 5 Endangered: 7 Vulnerable: 8
Despite a small population, undeveloped mineral deposits, and forest covering nearly 70 percent of the country, Lao's forests are threatened. Slash-and-burn agriculture, uncontrolled fires, commercial and illegal logging, and fuelwood collection resulted in the loss of 6.8 percent of the country's forests between 1990 and 2005. The deforestation rate has increased moderately since the close of the 1990s, but there is concern that the shift from a command economy toward a market-oriented economy will put increasing pressure on the forest resources of Laos.
The natural resources of Laos—including oil, natural gas, coal, hydroelectric potential, and mineral deposits—are attracting development interest in the country. According to the Wall Street Journal (September 16, 2004; "Laos Is Looking Like a Gold Mine To Foreigners" by Patrick Barta), foreign investors are looking to capitalize on Laos' underdeveloped mineral resources. With gold prices steady over $400 and few new deposits turning up in the usual places, mining companies are flocking to this poor, land-locked country bordered by China, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Laos, which holds the dubious record of being the most bombed country in the world despite never officially being involved in the Vietnam war, may become an important source of revenue for mining companies willing to take on the extra risk associated with operating in a country with large amounts of unexploded ordnance and poor infrastructure.
With the prospect of expanded mining operations in Laos, there is considerable concern over the environmental impact. Clear-cutting and the use of chemicals, especially mercury and cyanide, can cause severe ecological damage. Mining also exposes previously buried metal sulfides to atmospheric oxygen, causing their conversion to sulfuric acid and metal oxides, which run off into local waterways. Oxides tend to be more soluble in water and contaminate local rivers with heavy metals, affecting human populations and wildlife.
In the short term, the financial opportunities presented by mining overwhelm the potential ecological effects. For example, at peak production, a $330-million operation run by Australia-owned Oxiana should yield as much as $15 million in royalties and taxes for Laos—a significant sum for a country where the per capita GDP is around $1,700 per year.
Conservation in Laos faces considerable obstacles not only from increased interest in mining but also from the activities mentioned above, The strongly centralized approach to conservation—Laos is a Communist country—may spawn animosity toward conservation efforts at a local level if initiatives fail to account for local needs.
Despite these hurdles, there is hope for conservation in Laos. In an effort to protect the country's species richness, Laos recently established 18 National Biodiversity Conservation Areas including one known as Nakai Nam Theum National Biodiversity Area in the mountainous border area near Vietnam. During the 1990s researchers in this protected area discovered a new genus of cattle-like mammal along with two deer-like species.
Last chance to save a 'singular beauty' of Asia: the shy soala
(09/03/2009) Only discovered in 1992, the reclusive and beautiful saola Pseudoryx nghetinhensis may soon vanish from the Earth, if rapid action isn't taken to save one of Asia's most enigmatic and rare mammals. Listed as Critically Endangered, the species has experienced a sharp decline since its discovery due largely to poaching. "The animal's prominent white facial markings and long tapering horns lend it a singular beauty, and its reclusive habits in the wet forests of the Annamites an air of mystery," says Barney Long, of the IUCN Asian Wild Cattle Specialist Group.
Vietnam outsources deforestation to neighboring countries
(09/02/2009) Taking a cue from its much larger neighbor to the north, Vietnam has outsourced deforestation to neighboring countries, according to a new study that quantified the amount of displacement resulting from restrictions on domestic logging. Like China, Vietnam has experienced a resurgence in forest cover over the past twenty years, largely as a result a forestry policies that restricted timber harvesting and encouraged the development of processing industries that turned raw log imports into finished products for export. These measures contributed to a 55 percent of Vietnam's forests between 1992 and 2005, while bolstering the country's stunning economic growth. But the environmental benefit of the increase in Vietnam's forest cover is deceptive: it came at the expense of forests in Laos, Cambodia, and Indonesia. Authors Patrick Meyfroidt and Eric F. Lambin of the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium calculate that 39 percent of Vietnam's forest regrowth between 1987 and 2006 was effectively logged in other countries. Half of the wood imports into Vietnam were illegal.
Photo: First bald Asian songbird discovered
(07/30/2009) Researchers have discovered a bald species of songbird in a remote part of Laos, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society. The "Bare-faced Bulbul" is the first new species of bulbul – a family of about 130 species – described in Asia in over 100 years.
Pangolins threatened by illegal trade for traditional Chinese medicine
(07/14/2009) While their trade has been prohibited under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) since 2002, Asian pangolin populations are rapidly declining due to poaching for use in traditional Chinese medicine, report conservationists. Trade has nearly wiped out the species in Cambodia, Viet Nam and Laos, once strongholds for the scaly, toothless anteater.
Tropical East Asian forests under great threat
(06/02/2009) Tropical East Asia's rapid population growth and dramatic economic expansion over the past half century have taken a heavy toll on its natural resources. More than two-thirds of the region's original forest cover has been cleared or converted for agriculture and plantations, while its flora and fauna have suffered dearly from a burgeoning trade in wildlife products—several charismatic species have gone extinct as a direct consequence of human exploitation. Nevertheless tropical East Asia remains a top global priority for conservation, supporting up to a quarter of the world's terrestrial species.
Vietnam’s commercial wildlife farms threaten Asia’s species
(05/22/2009) Commercial wildlife farms are not alleviating pressure on wild populations as claimed by proponents, but exacerbating the problem according to a new report by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Vietnam’s Forest Protection Department. Such farms, which rear snakes, turtles, crocodiles, tigers, monkeys, and other—often rare—species, are meant to provide customers throughout Southeast Asia with legally produced ‘wild’ meats and other products.
Asia's conversion of forests for industrial rubber plantations hurts the environment
(05/21/2009) Policies promoting industrial rubber plantations over traditional swidden, or slash-and-burn, agriculture across Southeast Asia may carry significant environmental consequences, including loss of biodiversity, reduction of carbon stocks, pollution and degradation of local water supplies, report researchers writing in Science. Conducting field work in the Xishuangbanna prefecture of China's Yunnan province and assessing broader regional trends, Alan Ziegler of the National University of Singapore and colleagues argue that policies favoring agricultural intensification over small-scale slash-and-burn have encouraged the rapid expansion of rubber plantations across more than 500,000 hectares (1,930 square miles) of montane forest in China, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar. Despite widespread perception among authorities that "swidden cultivation is a destructive system that leads only to forest loss and degradation", the researchers found that the transition to industrial plantations has not necessarily been a boon to the environment.
Illegal hunting in Laos takes toll on wildlife
(04/20/2009) Deep in the rugged mountains of Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area (NEPL) on the Laos–Vietnam border, men smoke cigarettes and talk in hushed voices as they tramp through the forest. Approaching a baited trap, they hear the frantic snarls of an ensnared tiger. The tiger hangs by its front foot, suspended by a cable attached to a tree. The men shoot and make quick work of the tiger, removing its bones but leaving some of its carcass, including parts of its pelt, behind. The real money is no longer in tiger skins, but bones: the 10 to 12 kilograms of bone harvested from the adult tiger will yield $12,000-$15,000 in a region where per capita income is around $400 a year. Though the authorities are able to trace the weapon shells back to their village and locals know of the hunters' haul, two years later the evidence has not been enough to hold the men accountable for their crimes.
Photos of new species discovered in the Greater Mekong
(12/15/2008) More than 1,000 previously unknown species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong, a region comprising Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Vietnam and the Yunnan Province of China, in the past decade, according to a new report from WWF.
U.S. furniture demand drives illegal logging in Laos
(03/24/2008) In Vietnam the illegal timber trade continues unabated, in many ways due to the Southeast Asian country's growing economy and wealthy nations' insatiable demand for cheap furniture. Since 2000 Vietnam has seem a ten-fold increase in their furniture industry, a rise that is leading to large-scale illegal deforestation in the Mekong region, according to a report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Telapak Indonesia.
Rare jungle deer photographed for the first time
(07/24/2007) A camera trap has captured the first ever pictures of an elusive forest deer in its natural habitat, reports the Wildlife conservation Society (WCS).
Fires burn across Burma; pollution levels rise in Thailand
(03/20/2007) Fires are raging across Myanmar (Burma) causing 'haze' pollution in neighboring Thailand, Laos, and southern China according to new satellite images release by NASA. The fires are set annually during the dry season for clearing brush and scrub for agriculture. In especially dry years the fires often spread into adjacent forest areas.
6 species of frogs discovered in Laos
(04/20/2006) Six new species of frogs have been discovered in the Southeast Asia nation of Lao PDR, according to the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife conservation Society (WCS). Three newly discovered frog species are described in the recent issue of Copeia, the journal of the American Society of Herpetologists and Ichthyologists. WCS says that little is known about the new frogs, other than the location they were found and how the compare morphologically to similar species.
Newly discovered rodent not so new or rare after all
(04/05/2006) The newly discovered species of rodent found in a marketplace in Central Laos turns out to not be so new or so rare after all. The Laotian rock rat (Laonastes aenigmamus), as the long-whiskered and stubby-legged rodent is now known, is a species believed to have been extinct for 11 million years. It is a member of a family that, until now, was only known from the fossil record. The species was first described by Wildlife conservation Society (WCS) researcher Dr. Robert Timmins after it was found on a table at a hunter's market in central Laos. In a return trip to the market, WCS conservationist Peter Clyne found the rats to be quite common, photographing several specimens. According to Clyne, the rat is commonly brought in by hunters and eaten by local people.
Crazy jungle rodent is 11 million years old
(03/09/2006) The newly discovered species of rodent found in a marketplace in Central Laos turns out to not be so new after all. The Laotian rock rat, as the long-whiskered and stubby-legged rodent is now known, is a species believed to have been extinct for 11 million years. It is a member of a family that, until now, was only known from the fossil record.
Nigeria has worst deforestation rate, FAO revises figures
(11/17/2005) Nigeria has the world's highest deforestation rate of primary forests according to revised deforestation figures from the the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
US ranks #7 in global forest loss, Cambodia has worst deforestation rate
(11/16/2005) Cambodia has the world's highest deforestation rate, Brazil loses the largest area of forest annually, and Congo consumes more bushmeat than any other tropical country. These are among the findings from mongabay.com's analysis of new deforestation figures from the United Nations.
Bizarre rodent discovered in Southeast Asia; Oddity new to science
(05/11/2005) A team of scientists working in Southeast Asia have discovered a long-whiskered rodent with stubby legs and a tail covered in dense hair. But don't call it a squirrel. Or a rat. Because it's actually more like a guinea pig or chinchilla. But not quite. In fact the new species, found in Laos by scientists from the Wildlife conservation Society (WCS) and other groups, is so unique it represents an entire new family of wildlife.
