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MYANMAR (BURMA)
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Myanmar Forest Figures
Forest Cover
Total forest area: 32,222,000 ha
% of land area: 49%
Primary forest cover: n/a
% of land area: 0.0%
% total forest area: n/a
Deforestation Rates, 2000-2005
Annual change in forest cover: -466,400 ha
Annual deforestation rate: -1.4%
Change in defor. rate since '90s: 13.5%
Total forest loss since 1990: -6,997,000 ha
Total forest loss since 1990:-17.8%
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:n/a
Forest Classification
Public: 100%
Private: 0%
Other: 0%
Use
Production: 77%
Protection: 4.7%
Conservation: 15.2%
Social services: n/a
Multiple purpose: 3.2%
None or unknown: n/a
Forest Area Breakdown
Total area: 32,222,000 ha
Primary: n/a
Modified natural: 31,373,000 ha
Semi-natural: n/a
Production plantation: 696,000 ha
Production plantation: 153,000 ha
Plantations
Plantations, 2005: 849,000 ha
% of total forest cover: 2.6%
Annual change rate (00-05): 30,600,000 ha
Carbon storage
Above-ground biomass: 5,109 M t
Below-ground biomass: 1,226 M t
Area annually affected by
Fire: 6,500,000 ha
Insects: n/a
Diseases: n/a
Number of tree species in IUCN red list
Number of native tree species: 2,000
Critically endangered: 13
Endangered: 12
Vulnerable: 12
Wood removal 2005
Industrial roundwood: 3,880,000 m3 o.b.
Wood fuel: 39,180,000 m3 o.b.
Value of forest products, 2005
Industrial roundwood: $838,479,000
Wood fuel: $51,415,000
Non-wood forest products (NWFPs): $11,761,000
Total Value: $901,655,000
More forest statistics for Myanmar
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Myanmar, the country formerly called Burma, has come under fire in recent years for alleged severe human rights abuses by the military-run government, known by the misleading name of the State Peace and Development Council. This government installed itself in a military coup in 1988 and promised democratic elections the next year. The opposition party, the National League for Democracy, won resounding victory (80% of parliamentary seats) at the polls, but the military prevented them from assuming their seats and arrested many, including party leader Aung San Suu Kyi who has been periodically imprisoned or under house arrest since then.
The Burmese goverment is believed to get significant amounts of revenue from drug trafficking. Heroin, amphetamines, and other narcotics form the basis of the economy for this increadingly erratic and isolated pariah state. Relocation, imprisonment, and intimidation are commonly employed to quiet dissent within the country and the used of forced labor—or virtual slavery—is widespread according to human rights' groups and Burmese refugees living in border camps in Thailand.
Until the late 1990s, large parts of southern and eastern Burma had remained free from military rule due to the resistance of indigenous groups. However the inflow of foreign capital, mainly through offshore natural gas concessions to foregin firms, has given the military the means to assert control over these regions and increasingly exploit teak and other forest resources, in addition to local populations.
What this all means is that today Burma has one of the highest rates of forest loss on Earth. Between 1990 and 2005, Burma lost an average of 466,000 hectares of forest per year—or 18 percent of its total forest cover during that period. The deforestation rate has increased by 13.5 percent since the close of the 1990s.
Deforestation and forest degradation in Burma largely results from agriculture, logging, fuel wood collection, and, to a lesser extent, development for energy infrastructure. Logging in Burma is predominantly for teak, although the government is trying to promote the country's lesser known timber species to the international market. While there has been an official ban on raw log exports since 1993, evidence collected by several groups, including Global Witness, suggests that illegal logging is ride in Burma.
Global Witness reports that in 2004, more than 1 million cubic meters of timber—about 95% of Burma's total timber exports to China—were illegally exported from northern Burma to Yunnan Province. The trade is worth an estimated $250 million.
Burma's forest loss, and lack of forest protection (less than 1 percent of the country is protected) puts its biological diversity at risk. Burma has some 1709 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles according to figures from the World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Of these, 4.7% are endemic and 5.9% are threatened. Burma is home to at least 7000 species of vascular plants, of which 15.3% are endemic.
Recent articles | Burma news updates | XML
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.
High ivory prices in Vietnam drive killing of elephants in Laos, Cambodia
(02/19/2009) Indochina's remaining elephants are at risk from surging ivory prices in Vietnam, according to a new report from the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC.
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.
Elephants die significantly earlier in zoos than in wild
(12/11/2008) A new study from Science provides disturbing evidence that one of the zoos’ most popular animals, the elephant, faces a far shorter lifespan in captivity than in the wild. The findings raise new ethical and scientific questions regarding the rightness of keeping elephants in captivity and the causes of their shorter life-spans.
How to Save Snow Leopards
(10/28/2008) The snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is one of the rarest and most elusive big cat species with a population of 4,500 to 7,500 spread across a range of 1.2 to 1.6 million kilometers in some of the world's harshest and most desolate landscapes. Found in arid environments and at elevations sometimes reaching 18,000 feet (5,500 meters), the species faces great threats despite its extreme habitat. These threats vary across its range, but in all countries where it is found — Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and possibly Myanmar — the species is at risk. In some countries snow leopard are directly hunted for their pelt, in others they are imperiled by depletion of prey, loss of habitat, and killing as a predator of livestock. These threats, combined with the cat's large habitat requirements, means conservation through the establishment of protected areas alone may not be enough save it from extinction in the wild in many of the countries in which it lives. Working to stave off this fate in half a dozen of its range countries is the Snow Leopard Conservancy. Founded by Dr. Rodney Jackson, a biologist who has been studying snow leopard in the wild for 30 years, the Conservancy seeks to conserve the species by "promoting innovative grassroots measures that lead local people to become better stewards of endangered snow leopards, their prey, and habitat."
Trafficking of tiger parts is rife in Myanmar
(10/15/2008) Trafficking of parts from endangered wild cats is rife in Myanmar (Burma) according to a new report from TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network. Surveys conducted by TRAFFIC over the past 15 years have turned up 1,320 wild cat parts from at least 1,158 individual animals, including 107 tigers. The group says the toll in the country is far higher.
Camera traps capture photos of predators in Myanmar
(09/04/2008) Myanmar's dense northern wild lands, researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society have painstakingly gathered a bank of valuable data on the country's populations of tigers and other smaller, lesser known carnivores (see photo attachments). These findings will help in the formulation of conservation strategies for the country's wildlife.
China's log imports fall 19% in first half of 2008 due to high prices
(08/27/2008) China's imports of raw logs plunged 18.7 percent by volume for the first half of 2008 due to rising prices and a cooling Chinese economy, reports the International Tropical Timber Organization.
Massive deforestation of mangroves may have worsened scale of disaster in Burma
(05/13/2008) Weeks after the devastating cyclone Nagris struck Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta on May 2nd, scientists and the media are debating the role in the scale of the disaster played by the region's deforestation of mangroves. According to recent studies, mangrove forests act as a buffer against the effect's of tropical storms like Nagris, though scientists don't yet fully understand the relationship between storm mitigation and mangroves.
84 rare spoon-billed sandpipers found in Myanmar
(02/14/2008) BirdLife International found 84 critically endangered spoon-billed sandpipers in coastal Myanmar (Burma). The discovery is welcome news for a species down to 200 to 300 pairs remaining in the wild.
First photos of a wild South China Tiger in 34 years
(10/14/2007) Truckloads of illegal timber cross the Myanmar border to sawmills in China, while markets along the Thai border openly sell bear paws, tiger skins and elephant tusks.
Chinese demand takes toll on wildlife in Burma (Myanmar)
(09/04/2007) If the market of Mong La is anything to go by, the remaining wild elephants, tigers and bears in Myanmar's forests are being hunted down slowly and sold to China.
Chinese demand drives global deforestation
(06/10/2007) From outside, Cameroon's Ngambe-Tikar forest looks like a compact, tangled mass of healthy emerald green foliage. But tracks between the towering tropical hardwood trees open up into car park-sized clearings littered with logs as long as buses. Forestry officers say the reserve is under attack from unscrupulous commercial loggers who work outside authorized zones and do not respect size limits in their quest for maximum financial returns.
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.
Hiking through Myanmar, the country better known as Burma
(02/18/2007) The recent history of Myanmar is rather grim. After gaining independence from the British in 1948, the country suffered a series of military takeovers, and has basically been under the dictatorship of a military junta for the past 50 years. At several points during this time, the people have taken to the streets to peacefully protest the military regime. The last major fight for democracy occurred in 1988, and climaxed with the first democratically held election since independence. The National League for Democracy (NLD), spearheaded by the charismatic Aung San Suu Kyi, won by an overwhelming 84% of the vote. Sadly, regardless of their promises, the military junta had no intention of relinquishing their power, and imprisoned the major leaders of the NLD.
Stopping deforestation could net Burma $1 billion
(11/06/2006) Its status as a pariah state aside, Burma could earn hundreds of millions of dollars for cutting its deforestation rate under a carbon-trading initiative proposed by a coalition of developing countries and under discussion this week at U.N. climate talks in Nairobi, Kenya.
China fuels illegal logging in Burma
(10/31/2005) A new report, launched today by Global Witness at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Bangkok , "A Choice for China -- Ending the destruction of Burma's northern frontier forests" , details shocking new evidence of the massive illicit plunder of Burma's forests by Chinese logging companies. Much of the logging takes place in forests that form part of an area said to be "very possibly the most bio-diverse, rich, temperate area on earth."
Suggested reading - Books
Unless otherwise specified, this article was written by Rhett A. Butler [Bibliographic citation for this page]
Other resources
Contact me if you have suggestions on other rainforest-related environmental sites and resources for this country.
Image from the CIA World Factbook
CIA-World Factbook Profile
FAO-Forestry Profile
World Resources Institute
Last updated: 4 Feb 2006 |
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