Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 8
Ghosts of Indochina
M
ANY OF THE WORLD'S
most popular wildlife viewing spots feature tame, but still rare,
species that tolerate human proximity. The gray whales in Mexican lagoons, inquisitive giant
tortoises on the Galápagos Islands, and habituated mountain gorillas in Rwanda are all com-
fortable in our presence, failing to link humans with our penchant for violence. Such innocence
vanishes in the wake of war. On former human battlegrounds, wild animals flee at the snap of
a twig or the first scent of any human intruder. They sink into the foliage, becoming ghosts to
those who search for them. Once they have experienced the chaotic fear of war, most species
retain their dread of humans even long after hostilities have ended.
Nepal has suffered from a Maoist insurgency and the battles against it, and Peru struggled
through the Shining Path era. Neither, however, faced the seemingly endless conflict waged
in two other hotbeds of rarity, Vietnam and Cambodia. For a good part of the last half of
the twentieth century, the forests and wildlife of Indochina endured invasion, carpet bombing,
napalm, unexploded ordnance, land mines, defoliation by Agent Orange, and a heavily armed,
protein-starved populace. For fifty years, naturally rare species clung where they could to sur-
vival in the midst of mayhem.
The United States' war in Vietnam ended in 1975, but the Indochina region remained closed
to Western biologists for at least ten years longer. By then, the economies of Vietnam and
Cambodia had begun to recover from decades of war and deprivation. But many biologists had
spent the decade wondering about the fate of the irreplaceable wildlife that once flourished
in the rich mountain forests, river deltas, mangroves, and coral reefs of Indochina. After the
fall of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in 1979, was the unusual woodland wilderness east of
Angkor Wat in recovery, too?
The impact of war on a fragile peninsula such as Indochina is by no means unique. Many
other biologically and rarity-rich regions have suffered a similar fate. A short list includes
