Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
loging an impressive new collection. When Tony Whitten, an expert on animals in limestone
habitats, surveyed land snails along our route and in northern Vietnam, he discovered that
almost one-third of the 270 species he encountered were new to science. Besides land snails,
many species of plants and insects are also limestone specialists; searching a previously un-
explored outcrop can yield a haul of invertebrates of which 90 percent will be new to sci-
ence. Ha Long Bay, made famous in the film
Indochine
, is studded with more than 2,000
breathtakingly sculpted limestone islands, many holding rare orchids, balsams, and begonias
found nowhere else. The limestone bluffs in Vietnam offered in miniature a pattern that has
emerged across many limestone-rich areas in the tropics: hotbeds of species with extremely
small ranges on unusual soil types that have been reproductively isolated for long enough
periods to allow for speciation. Tragically, we observed dump trucks backing up to the base
of a limestone tower. The rarity-rich mountain of accessible limestone was being mined for
building materials. It was the first visual sign of our journey that nature conservation would
take a backseat to building the new Vietnam.
It wasn't until we entered the buffer zone of Cuc Phuong that the rich Vietnamese forest
appeared. At the headquarters we met the park director, Nguyen Ba Thu, a gentle man in
his late forties. He gave us a brief introduction to the park, and we then spent the afternoon
poking around the forest looking for some of Cuc Phuong's rare primates, among them the
Delacour's langur, a highly threatened species native to the park. Of the twenty-one species
of primates found in Vietnam, fourteen are endangered. Many have startlingly human faces,
especially the bewhiskered red-shanked douc, whose eyes are shadowed in powder blue.
The next day, Mr. Thu took us on a walking tour of the park. Besides its langurs, Cuc
Phuong is famous for a mammal endemic to Indochina, the Owston's palm civet. Civets re-
semble long-snouted weasels with bold stripes. This particular civet is restricted to Laos,
northern and central Vietnam, and nearby China. Cuc Phuong is one of the few parks
that offer this civet protection so it can pursue its favorite activity—hunting night crawl-
ers—without risking capture and ending up on a dinner plate. Palm civets are also expert cof-
fee pickers. Civets roam freely about the plantations and harvest only the ripest berries. Their
droppings contain select beans that, when picked out, washed, dried, and roasted, sell for a
fortune. In Vietnam these beans are marketed as “weasel coffee,” in Sumatra as
kopiluak
or
kopimusang
, “civet coffee.” Either way, some insist civet droppings yield the world's finest
java.
But after an entire day of exploration, we had seen neither civet nor langur. Our mammal
list had not expanded beyond a few squirrels. We had encountered leeches in great abund-
ance, however. Terrestrial leeches are rare in the New World (although there is a rich di-
versity of aquatic leeches) but ubiquitous in Asia above 2,000 meters and in moist lowland
habitats. One explanation for the dearth of leeches in the New World is that vast blood re-
serves disappeared when the region's large mammals went extinct in the Pleistocene epoch.
