Two recent species of camellia, a form of tea common in East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, have been discovered in a protected area in central Vietnam, reports Michael Tartarski on the web site Mongabay.
Species, named Camellia vuquangensis AND Camellia hatinhensisAccording to the Korean Journal of Plant Taxonomy, the full variety of camellia species in Vietnam is 75. This country, together with China, is the major center of diversity of this genus.
From recent discoveries, C. vuquangensis reaches a height of as much as 4 meters (13 ft) while C. hatinhensis grows to six meters (20 ft).
According to Josh Kempinski, country director of Fauna & Flora International (FFI) for Vietnam, such finds will not be unusual here. “This happens more often in Vietnam than in many other countries in the region,” he said in an interview. “Many important discoveries have been made in Vietnam over the last 15 to 20 years, both in terms of animals and plants.”
Two particularly diverse regions are the Truong Son Mountain Range, also referred to as the Annamite Range, situated on the border with Laos, where the brand new species was discovered; and the rugged, distant limestone mountains of the country’s far north.
“These are two absolutely global hotspots,” Kempinski said. “When it comes to reptiles and amphibians, new information is discovered all the time and does not necessarily make it to the media. A quite interesting recent discovery was a new species of oak (Quercus trungkhanhensis) from Cao Bang Province. This is quite a big deal, not only because of the importance of oaks to people in the northern hemisphere, but also because there is still a lot to discover at this level.”
Trung Khanh, a protected area along Vietnam’s border with China where the oak was found, can be home to the critically endangered Cao-vit crested gibbon (Nomascus natusus), as Mongabay reported at first of last yr.
Necessary conservation space
These protected areas are crucial for conserving biodiversity in Vietnam, says Filiberto Pollisco Jr., program officer on the Manila-based ASEAN Center for Biodiversity.
“They are the last bastion of protected, preserved and conserved species,” he wrote in an email. “New species discovered are often small or tiny because the big ones have already been described. However, there are exceptions where larger plants may be present in essentially the most distant a part of a protected area or in essentially the most unlikely places.
Kempinski agrees. “One protected area is not the same as a neighboring area, let alone anywhere else in the world, and in a country like Vietnam, I would say that the network of protected areas really impacts the conservation of biodiversity.”
There are 20 national parks and 14 nature reserves in Vietnam.
The discovery of latest species, corresponding to camellia varieties, could even have conservation advantages in other parts of the world, says David Gill, project manager of the Global Trees Campaign, a joint initiative of FFI and the UK’s Botanic Gardens Conservation International.
“These discoveries are incredibly important, helping to inform conservation work in the field, and often providing an additional form of motivation for the nature reserve staff working there,” Gill said in an interview. “I visited a reserve in China that had a recently discovered conifer, and when you were with the rangers, they were incredibly excited to show you the species.”
Experts also emphasize the importance of protecting endangered plant and tree species, which generally receive less attention than charismatic animal species corresponding to tigers, elephants and rhinos.
“While there is a lot of research being done on tree conservation, it is still relatively understudied,” Gill said. “For example, tea species in China are extremely endangered. It is highly prized, so some people tear out the entire plant and take it to a nursery. Even if they are in a protected area, they may not be safe unless protection is strengthened.”
It can be an area of lively discovery around the globe. According to Gill, there are currently roughly 192,000 plant species described on the planet, with 1,730 of them discovered in 2016 alone.
According to the GlobalTreeSearch database, with regards to trees, there are currently 60,088 known species. Of these, 23,550 species have been assessed as threatened and 11,377 of them are considered threatened by each IUCN and the National Red List assessments.
While the invention of a brand new species is exciting for conservationists, such events don’t necessarily translate into more funding for the species; Pollisco said high-level funding may very well be focused elsewhere. “When it comes to government funding or support, [a new species discovery] it doesn’t have much impact,” he said. “It depends on the government’s priorities, which are usually development, not research.”
Benjamin Rawson, director of development and conservation at WWF-Vietnam, said it takes time to properly classify recent discoveries for support.
“Many species conservation initiatives will be based on the relative level of threat to that species, i.e. whether it requires conservation interventions,” he said. “Newly discovered species by definition do not have a high conservation priority. However, we often do not know the true conservation status of a new species because it can only be described on the basis of one or a few specimens.”
On the non-governmental side, Gill said such finds could help conservation organizations with their calls for support. “It gives us something else to add to the proposal and say that this newly discovered species is only found here, and I think that’s definitely useful,” he said.
According to FFI’s Kempinski, it is obvious that protected areas are absolutely essential for global biodiversity, especially in Vietnam, where rapid economic growth and uncontrolled industrial development are having a serious impact on the environment.
“What remains of Vietnam’s biodiversity overall, as well as our ability to discover unique species,” he said, “now happens mainly or only in protected areas.”
