Relish the wild Mekong while you can
Two kinds of announcement from conservation groups habitually garner a prominent spot in the news agenda; either species are in peril, or species have been discovered alive and well.
On the face of it, WWF's highlighting this week of the over the last decade falls into the second category.
I don't know about you, but the prospect of a huntsman spider the size of a dinner plate is going to get my attention.
The spectacular green snake Trimeresurus gumprechti that WWF uses as the frontispiece for its report is also a visual wonder, as is the whole notion of the frog Chiromantis samkosensis with its green blood and turquoise bones.
Let's be honest; this is sexy, feel-good, wow-factor biodiversity news.
But when you look to the next decade rather than the last, the most important species in the whole report is undoubtedly the most familiar of all; Homo sapiens.
The Mekong's biodiversity has been preserved largely because a number of factors have kept human development at bay.
Parts of the region consist of wild mountain ranges which, if peopled at all, are home to ethnic groups who still have to live with nature as an equal partner rather than completely taming it. The Delta is criss-crossed with channels, making road-building difficult; people I know who have worked there talk about the local mosquitoes in phrases that conjure up images of flying piranhas.
Conflicts in and between Cambodia, Vietnam and southern China have curbed the pace of development, as have regimes that restricted entrepreneurship.
The Sun shines and the rains fall. Nature is productive, and the human load has not been big enough to subsume most of that productivity for itself; which is why nature has stayed so rich, and so hidden.
But as WWF points out, the balance of power between man and nature is changing fast.
Vietnam's population is rising at about 1% per year, that of Laos more than twice as quickly. Thailand's economy grew by just under 10% per year for a decade, until the Asian economic woes of the late 90s intervened.
Political systems have been liberalised, major conflicts are consigned to memory. So the human demand for land, water, timber, minerals and fuel rises.
According to , Cambodian fishermen - I guess that's still the word - pull an astounding seven million watersnakes from Tonle Sap lake every year, for food and for crocodile farms.
Laos is planning to turn a pretty coin from , becoming the "battery of southeast Asia". The giant dam, built with European investment, opens next year; there will be many more.
On the plains, cities expand, roads radiate outwards, farming becomes at once more extensive and more intensive, forests fall.
As WWF notes, 70% of the endemic mammals in the region are on the international - among them five primates, the tiger and the Asian elephant.
The Red List throws up the same diagnosis on page after page; habitat loss and hunting, habitat loss and hunting.
That the region should develop swiftly is no surprise. But it does mean, as WWF points out, that the development is going to have to become sustainable pretty quickly if the region's amazing creatures are to survive beyond much beyond the time of their discovery.
Can it? The portents are not good. As EU nations showed last week when attempting to finalise a package of measures to reduce carbon emissions, the attraction of business-as-usual remains powerful.
I have enjoyed that WWF has collated for its report this week, and thinking about the roles that the animals play in the region's complex ecosystems.
I love the gleam of the tiger's eyes, suddenly illuminated in the forest camera trap. I can almost hear the leaf rustle as the newly discovered Gekko scientiadventura scampers across it.
I'm going to relish the sexy feel-good end of the biodiversity news spectrum while I can.
Because I have a horrible feeling that within a couple of human generations, Homo sapiens will be exercising its untrammelled dominance over most of the Greater Mekong, just as it does now over the Danube, Ganges and Colorado.
The species peering into forest camera traps today will then be only glimpsed in the cages of zoos and the pages of natural history books, and journalists and conservation groups will be telling their even more familiar feel-bad tale of "species in peril".
I would love to be wrong. Are there any arguments that suggest I am?
I'm Richard Black, environment correspondent for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News website. This is my take on what's happening to our shared environment as the human population grows and our use of nature's resources increases.
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