Botanist Peter Fritsch first arrived in the Yunnan Province of China in 2000, and remembers marveling at the scope of the region his team was tasked to explore. That first year, Fritsch traveled to the Gaoligong Mountains—a range that runs along the border of Myanmar (also known as Burma) and supports millions of local lives—as part of a multi-disciplinary research project to survey the region’s profuse but little-known plants and animals.
“To call the region rugged is an understatement,” says Fritsch. “Over the course of several years, we’ve hiked through narrow canyons and valleys, and along raging rivers. These mountain habitats are so varied, it’s no surprise the life they contain is astoundingly rich.”
Now, more than 15 years after his first glimpse of the mountain range, Fritsch continues to lead a long-term, NSF-funded survey of regional biodiversity, uncovering a wealth of new species and creating a critical pool of GIS-based data for forest managers battling rapid deforestation.