LAMPI ISLAND, Myanmar — Off a remote beach backed by a lush tropical forest, Julia Tedesco skimmed the crystalline waters with mask and fins, looking for coral and fish life.
"There is almost nothing left down there," the environmental project manager said, wading toward a sign planted on the shore reading Lampi National Park.
About 50 meters behind it, secreted among the tangled growth, lay the trunk of an illegally felled tree. Nearby, a trap had been set to snare mouse deer. And just across the island, within park boundaries, the beach and sea were strewn with plastic, bottles and other waste from villagers.
The perilous state of Lampi, Myanmar's only marine park, is not unique. Although the country's 43 protected areas are among Asia's greatest bastions of biodiversity, encompassing snowcapped Himalayan peaks, dense jungles and mangrove swamps, they are to a large degree protected in name alone.
Park land has been logged, poached, dammed and converted to plantations as Myanmar revs up its economic engines and opens up to foreign investment after decades of isolation.
Of the protected areas, only half have even partial biodiversity surveys and management plans. At least 17 are described as "paper parks" — officially listed but basically uncared for — in a comprehensive survey funded by the European Union.
Rangers rarely see a tiger in the 8,452-square-mile Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve. The world's largest protected area for the big cats has been overrun by poachers supplying animal parts for traditional medicines in nearby China.
And Myanmar's first nature reserve, the Pidaung Wildlife Sanctuary set up in 1918, has been "totally poached out and should be degazetted," said Tony Lynam, a field biologist for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society.
Inaugurated in 1996, Lampi fit squarely into the paper-park category until possibly last year, when six rangers from the Forestry Department were finally assigned to protect this 79-square-mile marine gem. It had been, and still largely remains, a do-as-you-please place.
Local residents and staffers with Italian Instituto Oikos, the group Tedesco works for, say dynamite fishing persists even within earshot of the ranger station. They say Thai and Burmese trawlers encroach into no-fishing areas, and that natural forest on one park island, Bocho, is being converted to rubber, encouraged by government policy.
Despite the ongoing depredations, the park retains an incredible variety of natural life, according to a report by Oikos and the Burmese nongovernment group BANCA.
Tedesco said a Singapore company has been granted permission to build a hotel within the park "even before a management plan is in place." She said the onset of possible tourism carries risk, but also potential benefits.
"We need community participation to preserve the parks," said Naing Thaw, director of Myanmar's Forestry Department.
http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/myanmars-ecosystems-protected-only-on-paper/
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