Copyright 1996, Royal Ontario Museum.
When ROM herpetologist Bob Murphy and
entomologist Doug Currie returned to
Toronto from the rainforests of
Vietnam last month, the results of
their field expedition were identical
to the last time they ventured into
the country's remotest areas:
discovery after discovery of new
wildlife. A veritable find of
never-before-seen snakes, flies,
moths and spiders.
"Vietnam is such an incredible,
uncharted country," says Murphy. "Not
only are we discovering new species,
but the species we thought we did
know and did understand are doing
completely unexpected things --
living in areas where they shouldn't
be found, exhibiting strange physical
characteristics or habits. Vietnam is
a huge mystery to us; it's a
scientist's dream come true."
So successful has been the Royal
Ontario Museum's work in Vietnam,
that Vietnam's Institute of Ecology
and Biological Resources signed an
agreement with the Museum in May 1995
to cooperate on five biodiversity
research projects in different areas
of Vietnam. This agreement marks
Vietnam's first major cooperative
venture with a Western research
institution and the ROM's most
ambitious multidisciplinary
scientific research project ever.
Over the next several years, ROM
curatorial staff from the
ornithology, mammalogy and
ichthyology departments will join
Murphy and Currie as they help
Vietnam document its biodiversity.
It's difficult to imagine that a corner of the earth has
escaped modern exploration and development and can still yield
undiscovered species. But until recently, war-torn Vietnam was
closed to Western scientists. Thanks to Murphy's past
collaboration with the renowned Russian herpetologist Ilya
Darevsky (a man Murphy describes as a "god-like figure who has
worked throughout Eurasia for over 50 years"), the ROM's
curators were among the first Western biologists invited to
Vietnam to study the country's biodiversity. Prior to this
invitation, only Russian scientists were allowed to explore
Vietnam given the two countries' close political ties.
Biodiversity and resource management issues are especially
critical in tropical areas where the Earth's most extensive
biological diversity occurs. Often these tropical regions fall
within developing countries, such as Vietnam, that lack the
resources and training to carry out the necessary research and
conservation. As well, the country is facing increasing
economic pressure to tear down the rainforests and replace
them with agricultural crops such as rice or Australian gum
trees, or sell Vietnam's reptiles, birds and mammals on the
Asian black market. "Untold numbers of plants and animals are
in danger of disappearing before scientists can adequately
understand the significance of these species and the effect
their disappearance may have on the quality of human life,"
says Murphy.
According to the agreement signed by the ROM and the
Vietnamese government, the Museum will provide the expertise
needed to assess and document the quantity and variety of
animal life that Vietnam's rainforests currently support,
finance the expeditions, provide training in field and
laboratory techniques for their Vietnamese colleagues, and
manage and care for the resulting collections. In exchange,
the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources will support
the ROM by helping to obtain permits and visas, make
arrangements for field excursions, provide Vietnamese experts
to help with fieldwork, and help publish scientific materials.
"What we're trying to do in Vietnam is reconstruct
evolutionary history by determining how species are related to
one another, and how and why groups evolved," explains Murphy.
"More specifically, we're examining the evolutionary
constraints of cryptic species (animals that look the same but
are genetically different), and looking at the biogeography of
Vietnam's mountains to see if their history holds some clue to
the fauna's extraordinary diversity."
To date, Murphy and Currie, accompanied by Russian colleagues
and students from the University of Toronto, have focused
their field activities in fall 1994 and spring 1995 to sites
in northern Vietnam - Sa Pa, Ba Vi and Ba Be National Parks,
Tam Dao and locations along the Khe Mi River. In the future,
Murphy hopes that the ROM's curators can also start to explore
the fauna of southern Vietnam, as well as returning to regions
in the north. The next trip is slated for the spring of 1996
when Murphy and Currie hope to be joined for the first time by
researchers from the ROM's Mammalogy Department who will study
bats, rodents and other small mammals.
"It's my hope that over the next four
years we can spend three to four
month-long periods in the field,
collecting as many species as we can,"
says Murphy. "We've already collected
over 4,000 diverse specimens, making the
ROM's holdings of Vietnamese amphibians
and reptiles the largest in the world.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
If we're really going to understand the
significance of Vietnam's incredibly
diverse flora and fauna, we need to
acquire much more comparative material,
and then it's going to take up to ten
years of laboratory analysis involving
cutting-edge DNA technology in order to
get a clear idea or a bigger picture of
the country's wildlife."
"Some people express concern at our own
collecting, perhaps seeing us as no
different from the black market dealers,
but there is a fundamental difference
between our aims and theirs," explains
Murphy. "When illegal traders remove
animal after animal from its environment,
it's simply to turn a fast buck with no
thought to the consequences. When we do
our field collecting, we only take an
organism if we are absolutely sure that
it will add to our understanding of what
this animal is, how it interacts with its
environment and ultimately how we can
preserve this species and its habitat
from extinction. If we don't understand
Vietnam's flora and fauna, we'll never
know how to save them."
As stipulated in the agreement between the ROM and Vietnam's
Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources, all of the
Museum's research will be shared with the Vietnamese, who are
committed to conservation and learning how to use and manage
their resources for both economic and health gain. As well,
Vietnamese colleagues will come to Toronto to offer their
expertise and learn new methods from the ROM's researchers.
Conserving the country's rainforests and wildlife is a
challenge though, says Murphy. "Vietnam's need for money could
serve to undermine conservation efforts. The worst thing that
could ever happen to any of their organisms is to have them
identified as being rare or special. As soon as this happens
they begin to disappear. Already, a thousand snakes a day are
lost, victims of the trade in species."