Hukaung Logs

One of the main reasons for starting the community forestry work in the Hukaung Valley (see Naw Aung and His Sagawa) is that a lot of the important subsistence resources for villagers, e.g. timber and rattan, are being harvested commercially and gradually depleted by outsiders.  For example, the load of sagawa logs shown above being hauled across the Taron River to Tanai (see Crossing the Taron). 

Racing Elephants

We were standing on the Ledo Road measuring tree heights with a clinometer when two elephants with their mahouts came racing toward us. I was able to get some footage - but almost got run over in the process. [NOTE: Never found out where they were going.  I think they were just having a race].

Flat Tire on the Ledo Road

I had a pretty tight travel schedule after we finished the fieldwork in Shinlonga (see Naw Aung and His Sagawa). Went back to Tanai on Sunday after the final wrap-up meeting with the community, and then the six hour drive to Myitkyina on Monday to catch my flight to Yangon on Tuesday to make my Singapore Airlines flight back to New York on Wednesday. Any screw-ups in this itinerary and I don't make it back to New York in time for Christmas (see Merry Christmas).  And then we got the flat driving back to Myitkyina on the Ledo Road...

River Taxis

River taxis parked in the early morning at the port in Tanai (see Tanai). Most of these boats are made from kyilan wood (Shorea assamica Dyer; white meranti group), which is one of the most abundant tree species in the Shinlonga management area (see The Last Stake and Believe Your Eyes).

Stick and Wheel

The classic toy. All you need is a stick, a wheel, and a little imagination. This Kachin kid was having so much fun that I had to film him. [NOTE: He had been coming over to the field office in Shinlonga for days before I finally got out the video camera].

Believe Your Eyes

Laying out the baseline at Shinlonga (see The Last Stake) involved a strange mix of GPS and compass. As shown in the photo above, Jon Kuan is using a compass to lay out the next plot stake, but he has a GPS is his other hand to "check" how the line is going.

The baseline that the crew at Shinlonga laid out was one of the straightest, most bearing-correct lines I've ever run in a tropical forest. In most places, you could easily line up three or four stakes (see image below). The guys, however, took a waypoint on every stake and were continually plotting the line - which zigzagged all over the place. This was due to the 5 to 7 meter positional error necessarily involved in every GPS reading. Although their eyes were telling them that the line was as straight as a string, the GPS was telling them that they were going crooked. And they worried about this. I finally convinced them to believe their eyes and to put their GPS receivers back in their packs. [NOTE: When we eventually plotted the first and last waypoints, our baseline was oriented precisely magnetic North, a result which seemed to reassure everyone about the quality of the work].

Kyauktawgyi Buddha

The Kyauktawgi Pagoda in Yangon contains a colossal statue of the Buddha, 37 feet tall and 24 feet wide. The statue was carved from a single piece of white marble, floated on a raft down the Ayeyarwady River (see Confluence of the Ayeyarwady) to Yangon from Mandalay Division. [NOTE: Thanks to U Saw Htun for showing this to me].

The Last Stake

After running two kilometers of line through a tract of forest located several hours walk from the village of Shinlonga in the Hukaung Tiger Reserve (see Naw Aung and His Sagawa), setting the last stake was an auspicious occasion. [NOTE: It took three days to clear the line and set all 20 stakes. These stakes form the baseline of a 100 hectare intensive management area for the community, and are the starting points of inventory transects. It's an amazing thing that we are doing here]. 

The Cookie and the Caterpillar

This ones's pretty straightforward. Blissfully happy little Kachin girl with a package of sugar wafers in one hand and a twig with a huge green caterpillar in the other. [NOTE: This was taken while doing household interviews in Shinlonga last week].

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

A bit of holiday cheer. This clip, filmed last week, shows the kitchen and the cooking crew at the camp in Shinlonga in the Hukaung Tiger Reserve.  The guys are preparing lunch, but I was most taken by what was playing on the radio.  Never heard this song in Burmese before...