Latest WWF Mekong Report with a foreword from Editor at Nature Conservation Prof. Dr. Thomas Ziegler

To provide the final touch to the WWF 2020 Mekong Report, released in late January 2022, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) reached out to Prof. Dr. Thomas Ziegler, Curator for Herpetology, Ichthyology and Invertebrates, at Cologne Zoo (Köln, Germany) and active editor and author at Nature Conservation.

The report lists a total of 224 species described as new to science in 2020, having been discovered from the Greater Mekong region, to simultaneously demonstrate the enormous biodiversity richness of the region, its vulnerability to human activities and climate change, and how crucial it is to “stop the degradation of the planet’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature.”

“In particular, species that only occur in highly restricted geographic areas need our concerted support because they are highly vulnerable to direct human-caused threats and face increased extinction risks. In this respect, studying the degree of endemism and existing threats is as important as the work of discovery. Unfortunately, for many species, these data are completely unknown, and we must build the capacity of young researchers to help fill these knowledge gaps,” writes Ziegler in his foreword.

In his interview for BBC World’s flagship programme Newshour, Thomas spoke of the large number of discoveries listed in the WWF 2020 Mekong Report as “the modern paradox”, where “on the one hand we discover more and more new species: in particular with the help of modern molecular analyses. But, on the other hand, we also lose them very quickly because of forest destruction, human settlements, agriculture or climate change.”