We would want to change our job if we had a chance… I want to work in the shade.” Lieu grabs the sack, the bundle of snakes bouncing off her lap as they drive away. About 70 million people depend directly on the Greater Mekong's ecosystems for food, water, livelihoods and other vital services. Greater Mekong forest facts. In 2011, 126 new species were found in the Great Mekong, including fish, snakes, frogs, bats and 82 plants. Over 1300 new species have been catalogued since 1997. The trip on the Mekong River, which gives life to local people for hundreds of years, was simply an amazing experience. Snakes and scorpions preserved in Rice Whiskey in a Mekong River village in Laos Statue of Seven-headed Serpent located by the Mekong River in downtown Nakhon Phanom, Thailand.
Mekong River in Laos The upper Mekong section is 2,200 kilometers long in Chinese territory, also known as the Lan Xiang River with the 5000-meter slope from the headwaters. “In rainy days we have to swim in the rivers to hunt the snakes. The Greater Mekong has no fewer than 20,000 species of plants, 1,200 bird species, 800 species of reptiles and amphibians, and 430 mammal species. Brown and cloudy river with snakes and crocodiles was definitely not a place where I intended to swim, but he was very serious. It is a problem that could spread as the river snakes its way towards Cambodia and the crucial Tonle Sap lake and finally into the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam. “Sometimes we work till midnight,” he says. Vientiane, Lao PDR, 30 August 2013—The People’s Republic of China has agreed to share more hydrological data with the cruises Mekong River Commission which will improve Read More » Mekong River is divided into two main parts: the upper Mekong and the lower Mekong. Forest landscapes—spanning an area roughly the size of France—are the largest combined tiger habitat in the world and are priority areas for WWF’s tiger conservation work.