Qualla: Dong Ampham National Biodiversity Conservation Area

Dong Ampham National Biodiversity Conservation Area: Introduction

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Somewhere in the hills of southeastern Laos, beyond the point where roads become tracks and tracks become animal paths, a clouded leopard patrols a forest that has never been cleared. It shares that forest with sun bears, Asian golden cats, Asian elephants, and Siamese crocodiles — a collection of megafauna that would have been unremarkable across mainland Southeast Asia a century ago, but has become increasingly extraordinary as the lowland forests around it have been converted to agriculture and plantations. Dong Ampham National Biodiversity Conservation Area, established in 1993, covers 200,000 hectares of the Annamite Range's western slope in Attapeu and Sekong Provinces. Scientists have called what remains here "some of the last intact areas of lowland and tropical forest remaining in mainland Southeast Asia." The trees have not been moved. The animals have not been relocated. They are simply still there, which in this part of the world has become the rarest thing of all.

Dong Ampham National Biodiversity Conservation Area: A Mountain Range as a Boundary

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Annamite Range — known in Vietnamese as the Trường Sơn — forms the spine of mainland Southeast Asia, running from southern China down through Laos and Vietnam to the Mekong delta. Its western slopes, draining toward the great river, form one of the most biologically significa...

Dong Ampham National Biodiversity Conservation Area: The Creatures That Remain

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What draws conservation biologists to Dong Ampham is the persistence of species that have been extirpated or severely reduced across most of their historical range. The Siamese crocodile, once widespread across Southeast Asia, now exists in only a handful of locations; the Dong A...

Dong Ampham National Biodiversity Conservation Area: Birds at the Edge of the Range

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

BirdLife International has designated Dong Ampham an Important Bird Area, a recognition that reflects both the richness of the avifauna and the presence of restricted-range species found nowhere else. The black-hooded laughingthrush is endemic to a small zone along the Annamite f...

Dong Ampham National Biodiversity Conservation Area: The Price of Remoteness

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Dong Ampham has survived in part because it is genuinely difficult to reach. The roads into Attapeu and Sekong Provinces are limited; the interior of the reserve has no infrastructure for tourism; and Laos, still one of the least-visited countries in Southeast Asia, has not yet a...