BANGKOK -- From Kalaw town's bamboo forest to the Hsipaw Reserved Forest in Shan State and the freshwater swamps that flank the Irrawaddy River, Myanmar's forests rank among the world's most dramatic natural landscapes. But the country's civil war is threatening conservation programs and facilitating illegal logging on a massive scale.
"Big booming pieces of conservation cannot happen under the current conditions because the ability to do great policy work and influence the whole chain is harder," said Christy Williams, the former country director of the nongovernmental organization World Wide Fund for Nature in Myanmar, who was speaking in a personal capacity.
