February 24, Nam Theun Reservoir
1. Because the word Annamite carries connotations of “conquered south” and constitutes a reminder of centuries of Chinese hegemony, the preferred term for the mountains in Vietnam is Truong Son, which translates as “Long Mountain.” The Lao name for the range, Sayphou Louang, has a similar meaning, but since neither name is a suitable descriptor for the other country’s uplands, one returns to Annamite Mountains.
2. Some will argue that the Nam Et–Phou Louey protected area in Laos is larger than NNT, but Nam Et–Phou Louey actually consists of two adjacent but separately gazetted protected areas. It is only larger in the aggregate, if then, and calculations of land areas vary. The same distinction applies to the extensive complex of protected areas within Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains.
3. Vientiane Times, August 20, 2013.
4. Ronald H. Pine, “New Mammals Not So Seldom,” Nature 369 (April 14, 1994): 593.
5. Edward McCurdy, comp., The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 2002), 223. Or see: Item 1232, on “Incontinence,” accessed at www.universalleonardo.org/work.php?id=438.
6. William Robichaud, “Notes on a Remarkable History: Cedar Grove Ornithological Station,” Passenger Pigeon 72, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 215–18.
February 25, Ban Tong
1. Much of the information on the wildlife trade presented herein is derived from interviews, unpublished reports, and grant proposals. Among published books, none is more valuable than Hanneke Nooren and Gordon Claridge, Wildlife Trade in Laos: The End of the Game (Amsterdam: Netherlands Committee for IUCN, 2001). Also recommended is Richard Ellis, Tiger Bone and Rhino Horn: The Destruction of Wildlife for Traditional Chinese Medicine (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2005).
The leading worldwide authority on illegal trade in wildlife and plants is TRAFFIC, a joint program of WWF and IUCN founded in 1976. TRAFFIC’s extensive body of publications, including material written by TRAFFIC staff but published by other organizations, can be accessed at www.traffic.org.
2. Some authorities differentiate the Vietnamese three-striped box turtle as a separate species, C. cyclomata, but for the purposes of traditional Chinese medicine, the turtles are identical.
3. Jack Tordoff, a biologist experienced in Vietnam, reports that he has visited villages where the entire male population was absent—gone to Laos on turtle-hunting missions lasting a month or more.
4. Moreover, if the NTPC and the government of Laos differed in their interpretation of the Concession Agreement, the Panel of Experts would step in and arbitrate the dispute. Their power was intended to be draconian, their word final.
5. In Lao, nyang signifies “tree resin” and refers also to various dipterocarps that produce it, but, as place names tend to be ancient, the river’s name more likely derives from a similar-sounding word in a language that was spoken in these parts before Lao became the lingua franca of the region.
6. Outside the United States, the World Wildlife Fund subsequently renamed itself the World Wide Fund for Nature. In either case, it remains known as WWF.
7. John MacKinnon, “Apocalypse Yesterday,” BBC Wildlife, February 1994.
8. Vu Van Dung and Do Tuoc, “The Discovery of the Saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) in Vietnam,” in James Hardcastle et al., eds., Rediscovering the Saola—Proceedings of Rediscovering the Saola: A Status Review and Conservation Planning Workshop (Hanoi: WWF Indochina Program, SFNC Project, 2004).
9. The village name is given by Do Tuoc in the WWF film formerly referenced at http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/species/profiles/mammals/saola/saola_video/ but seemingly no longer accessible. It is also given in Eugene Linden, “Ancient Creatures in a Lost World,” Time, June 20, 1994.
10. “Journey into Vietnam’s Lost World,” Time, August 10, 1992. This account was derived from the original WWF announcement, of which no copy appears to be extant.
11. Placement of saola in the evolutionary progression of bovid species remains a subject of research. Robichaud’s efforts to collect samples of bone from saola trophies in Nakai–Nam Theun were an expression of this. See, for instance, John Gatesy and Peter Arctander, “Hidden Morphological Support for the Phylogenetic Placement of Pseudoryx nghetinhensis with Bovine Bovids: A Combined Analysis of Gross Anatomical Evidence and DNA Sequences from Five Genes,” Systematic Biology 49, no. 3 (2000): 515–38.
12. Vu Van Dung et al., “A New Species of Living Bovid from Vietnam,” Nature 363 (June 3, 1993): 443–45.
13. Barbara Basler, “Vietnam Forest Yields Evidence of New Animal,” New York Times, June 8, 1993.
February 26, Ban Nameuy
1. One of the master documents for the Nam Theun 2 project is the Social and Environmental Management Framework and Operational Plan, known as SEMFOP, available at www.namtheun2.com (see under the home-page heading DOCUMENTS). Part 3 of SEMFOP is the Ethnic Minorities Development Plan (January 2005), which summarizes the relatively scant ethnological information then available concerning the people of the Nakai–Nam Theun National Protected Area.
2. Eleanor Jane Sterling, Martha Maud Hurley, and Le Duc Minh, Vietnam: A Natural History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 54–56. If we look back deeper in time, forty million years or so, we see that other, slower geologic processes have also caused emergence or submergence of land bridges at the periphery of the modern mainland and by so doing have influenced the evolution of life-forms and the development of the region’s biota.
3. Cervus canadensis. The term elk can be confusing, as in northern Europe and Asia it connotes moose, Alces alces.
4. Sarah Lyall, “Rhino Horns Put Europe’s Museums on Thieves’ Must-Visit List,” New York Times, August 26, 2011.
February 27, Ban Nameuy
1. In the summer of 2013, the Wildlife Conservation Society estimated that perhaps five tigers still roamed the forests of Lao PDR, all of them in the north of the country, far from Nakai–Nam Theun. Some of these tigers may periodically range across the border into Vietnam, but none is resident there and Vietnam is otherwise bereft of the great cat that figures so prominently in its mythology and traditions. Barring intervention of a vigorous program to eliminate poaching and rebuild populations of both tigers and their prey (which is not currently in sight), prospects for the survival of tigers in Laos are bleak.
2. One deconstruction of the legend holds that phi kong koy represents a deep memory of orangutans when they inhabited mainland Asia during the Pleistocene.
February 28, Thong Kouang
1. Barely out of his teens, Timmins predicted that if the Cebu flowerpecker, a Philippine bird unseen in many years, still existed, it was likely to be found in a certain remnant patch of forest. So he went to the patch, and sure enough, flowerpeckers flitted about the treetops. But Timmins has limits: the Cebu flowerpecker is distinguished by red and green patches on its back, and Timmins has what he calls “a color vision deficiency.” Basically, “red or green on small birds in the tops of trees is just something that I can’t see.” So he had to send someone back to confirm the colors. The confirmation was made: Timmins had rediscovered the Cebu flowerpecker.
2. A Russian team scooped Timmins on publication of the species description. They named the rabbit timminsi in what might be read as a scientific apology. A. O. Averianov, A. V. Abramov, and A. N. Tikhonov, “A New Species of Nesolagus (Lagomorpha, Leporidae) from Vietnam with Osteological Description,” Zoological Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2000.
3. The kha-nyou is also known as the Laotian rock rat, a dreadful name on two counts. Laotian is a colonial construction deplored by defenders of Lao culture, including Robichaud. Lao, as noun or adjective, is always preferable. And rock rat belittles an extremely rare and enigmatic creature that, in the final analysis, is not a rat.
4. The same question might be asked regarding the leaf muntjac (M. putaoensis) and Roosevelts’ muntjac (M. rooseveltorum, named in honor of Theodore Jr. and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of the American president). For additional details, see discussion of these species written principally by Rob Timmins and Will Duckworth at www.iucnredlist.org.
5. A species of Lagerstroemia, possibly angustifolia or macrocarpa, members of the crape myrtle family.
March 1, Thong Sek
1. George B. Schaller and Alan Rabinowitz, “The Saola or Spindlehorn Bovid Pseudoryx nghetinhensis in Laos,” Oryx 29, no. 2 (April 1995): 107–14.
2. The “self-styled veterinarian” worked for an NGO, the Carnivore Preservation Trust, which had settled in Lak Xao under General Cheng’s protection. The trust kept a few bears and small cats in cages, but its operations were the work of enthusiasts, not professionals. One of its several harmful practices, which caused Robichaud and his colleagues to nickname it the Carnivore Decimation Trust, was to feed its captive carnivores wildlife bought at the Lak Xao market, thus boosting demand for locally killed animals and depleting the prey base for carnivores in the wild. After General Cheng fell from power, the trust teetered for a while, then folded its tent and departed Laos.
March 2, Nam Nyang, Camp 1
1. Eleanor Jane Sterling, Martha Maud Hurley, and Le Duc Minh, Vietnam: A Natural History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 224.
2. In the early days of saola research some authorities reported that thien nien kien, or Homalomena aromatica and other Homalomena species, were vital food for saola, but this now appears to have been a misidentification.
March 5, A Tributary of the Nam Nyang
1. Philip Shenon, “An Indochinese Goat Is Imperiled by Its Year of Fame,” New York Times, November 29, 1994. See also “Greed Hastens Demise of New Mammal,” Bangkok Post, July 2, 1995.
2. Professor Jack Rutledge of the University of Wisconsin–Madison received the following fax on August 1, 1994, from Bi Xuan Nguyen at the National Centre of Science and Technology in Hanoi:
Dear Prof. Rutledge,
… Enclosed you find the photographs of living Saola (Vu Quang pseudoryx and some informations about new jungle deer [large-antlered muntjac]. Last days, there are two other new young Saola females have been captured by montain hunters. I’m regret haven’t money to by them (they have asked for about 2000 US$). So the hunters are being forced to give back these animals into the forest.
I am looking to hear from you soon.
Kindest regards.
3. Shanthini Dawson, “Saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) Studies in Nghe An and Ha Tinh Provinces, Vietnam,” consultancy report for World Wide Fund for Nature Indochina Programme, National Wildlife Federation, and World Conservation Union, Hanoi, Vietnam, April 1995. Dawson mentions seven saola killed or captured (and eventually dead) in 1994. I reduced the number by one to reflect the juvenile taken to FIPI. The second FIPI juvenile probably came from Pu Mat.
4. Saola Working Group, “From Plans to Action: Proceedings of the First Meeting of the Saola Working Group,” Vientiane, Lao PDR, August 17–21, 2009: 13.
5. Malcolm W. Browne, “Vietnam Finds First Live Example of Rare Ox,” New York Times, June 23, 1994.
March 11, Nakai
1. Appendix 1 of a 1995 preliminary report by Shanthini Dawson ensuing from “a field trip which ended in February 1994.” Dawson delivered the report directly to the minister of forestry, recommending that the ministry “liaise with the People’s Committee of Ha Tinh province to pass an interim decree which would make any form of hunting/trapping of the Vu Quang ox illegal.” The decree appears to have been issued soon after Dawson’s meeting with the minister.
2. The last strong evidence of rhinos in Laos is a report of a rhinoceros being shot on a remote headwater of the Nam Theun in 1990. This could have been a lesser one-horned or an Asian two-horned rhinoceros, both species being native to the region and both now presumed eradicated from Laos (see J. W. Duckworth, R. E. Salter, and K. Khounboline, Wildlife in Lao PDR:1999 Status Report [Vientiane: IUCN, 1999], 201). Intermittent reports of rhinos in NNT continued until at least 2004, but none was confirmed.
3. A third subspecies, R. sondaicus inermis, known from the area that is now Myanmar, Bangladesh, and northeastern India, was presumed extinct by 1925.
4. Rhishja Larson, “Rhino Horn: All Myth, No Medicine,” National Geographic News Watch, July 7, 2010. Accessed at http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2010/07/07/rhino_horn_and_traditional_chinese_medicine_facts/.
5. This incantatory list of illnesses is borrowed (save for the addition of “hangover”) from “Rhino Horn Use: Fact vs. Fiction,” at the website for the PBS program Nature: www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/rhonoceros/rhino-horn-use-fact-vs-fiction/1178/, accessed May 25, 2012.
March 12, Nakai
1. Andreas Reinecke, “Bi-Cephalous Animal-Shaped Ear Pendants in Vietnam,” Bead Study Trust Newsletter 28 (Winter 1996): 5–8.
2. According to linguist James R. Chamberlain, Guignard compiled his dictionary in a town on the upper Song Ca, in Nghe An Province, Vietnam, near today’s Pu Mat National Park. It was at Pu Mat that Nguyen Ngoc Chinh of FIPI confirmed the presence of the “Vu Quang bovid” in 1993 and learned that local Tai villagers called it saola. Chamberlain says that the Guignard dictionary is “in fact a dictionary of the [local] Phouan language, not Lao proper.”
3. Antiaris toxicaria, a member of the Moraceae family, which includes mulberry and fig. In Atel, the name is tanaong.
4. The Atel are one of many small groups among the cultures of central Laos. Perhaps a dozen languages are spoken in NNT alone—two dozen if one enlarges the area by a few kilometers—making central Laos one of the most diverse linguistic regions on the planet. Analysis of the Atel language suggests that it is at least two thousand years old, perhaps considerably more. Its proximity to other ancient Vietic tongues—Kri, Thémarou, Malang, and others—suggests that the Vietnamese language was born in the central Annamites, a conclusion much at odds with the traditional model of Vietnamese cultural development, which points to China as the source of Vietnam’s linguistic and social character. (More than 60 percent of the vocabulary of contemporary Vietnamese consists of borrowings from Chinese, a result of many centuries of interchange and domination.) James R. Chamberlain, who was instrumental in putting together the new family tree of Vietic languages, expected the keepers of Vietnamese historical tradition to rebuff the theory of an Annamite origin for Vietnamese. But the opposite happened. Vietic tribal languages in Vietnam are especially concentrated in Nghe An Province, somewhat north of NNT. Nghe An also happens to be the natal home of Ho Chi Minh. That Nghe An is the birthplace of both the nation’s language and its greatest hero has proved to be a highly acceptable revelation.
A vital source on Vietic linguistic history and on Atel ethnology is Chamberlain’s “Eco-Spatial History: A Nomad Myth from the Annamites and Its Relevance for Biodiversity Conservation,” in Xu Jianchu and Stephen Mikesell, eds., Landscapes of Diversity: Indigenous Knowledge, Sustainable Livelihoods and Resource Governance in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia, Proceedings of the III Symposium on MMSEA 25–28 August 2002, Lijiang, P.R. China (Kunming: Yunnan Science and Technology Press, 2003), 421–36.
5. Chamberlain, “Eco-Spatial History,” 431.
March 15, Nam Mon, Camp 2
1. It is unlikely that giving exact latitude and longitude would do harm, for the location of the poung is well known locally, but exact information would also make possible the criticism, even if false, that after the coordinates of the poung were published all the animals were hunted out.
2. Interestingly, the small-toothed ferret badger of the Annamites (Melogale moschata) can be distinguished from its large-toothed cousin (M. personata) only by physical examination of dentition, a potentially traumatic experience for badger and examiner alike. By contrast, the leech-survey method should allow the badgers’ presence to be detected without capture or handling, a benefit to all. For the process to work, however, there must first be baseline sets of DNA sequences from animals of verified identity. At present some researchers question whether the genetic sequences purported for the Annamites’ two types of ferret badgers are entirely reliable.
3. Should M. truongsonensis prove to be distinct, its detection in the Saola Nature Reserve, Quang Nam Province, where the revealing leech was collected, would be an important datum in the map of its range.
4. Ida Bærholm Schell et al., “Screening Mammal Biodiversity Using DNA from Leeches,” Current Biology 22, no. 8 (April 24, 2012): R262–63. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.02.058.
March 16, Nam Mon, Camp 3
1. J. W. Duckworth et al., “Why South-east Asia Should Be the World’s Priority for Averting Imminent Species Extinctions, and a Call to Join a Developing Cross-Institutional Programme to Tackle This Urgent Issue,” S.A.P.I.EN.S. 5, no. 2 (2012). Online since August 12, 2012, at http://sapiens.revues.org/1327.
March 17, Nam Mon, Camp 4
1. Tragulus kanchil, the lesser Oriental chevrotain, is found throughout much of Southeast Asia. The IUCN Red List classifies it as a species of “least concern.”