More than two dozen flora and fauna species have been found in Myanmar since it emerged from a half-century of military rule and isolation, the Associated Press reported.
As the biologically diverse nation of 60 million speeds up its economic engines and opens up to foreign investment, the last two years has seen scientists highlight the importance of investing money in conservation, the World Wildlife Fund said Thursday.
The discoveries include a dragon fish with intricate, maze-like markings on every scale, a frog with rough, chocolate-colored skin and a ginger plant.
Problems ranging from deforestation and illegal wildlife trade to mining and the development of hydropower have already made the nation give in to some of the pressures voiced by Southeast Asia neighbors.
"The 26 plants and animals newly identified in Myanmar include a species of dragon fish, which are hugely popular in the Asian aquatic world," according to the AP. "The so-called 'scribbled arowana,' is creating a buzz on the aquarium fish blogosphere because of its unheard-of complex, maze-like markings on every individual scale."
"Previously unidentified by scientists, a ginger plant collected from a single region in the cloud forests of the western state of Rakhine had been hiding in plain sight at local markets, WWF said. And a chocolate-spotted frog, a member of the Amolops family, was discovered in a mountain range that stretches along Myanmar's western border and India."
A lot more remains to be discovered in the country, with scientists only starting to have scraped the surface, Win Myo Thu, co-founder of the local environmental group EcoDev, said.
In part because Myanmar was cut off from the rest of the world for such a long time, limiting the ability to carry out a proper inventory, "there is a huge, huge knowledge gap," he said. "The more research that is done, the more species we are going to find," the AP reported.
