British forest surveys from 1880-1940 recorded species no longer present. Comparing historical and modern data quantifies local extinctions—several orchid species vanished before they were formally described.
Mr P Mashall, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Ghosts in the data
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the British colonial administration in Burma established Maymyo, now called Pyin Oo Lwin, as a summer capital to escape the heat of the plains. To manage the region's valuable timber resources, particularly teak (Tectona grandis), the British Indian Forest Service undertook systematic forest inventories. These were not ecological surveys in the modern sense but detailed economic assessments. Foresters created "working plans" that mapped forest tracts, estimated timber volumes, and listed commercially important tree species.
These colonial-era documents, compiled between the 1880s and the 1940s, have become unintentional ecological time capsules. They provide a detailed botanical baseline of a forest ecosystem that has since been dramatically altered. Researchers today compare these historical species lists with current field surveys to measure biodiversity loss over the last century. The data reveals a silent extinction event. The most poignant examples are orchids that were recorded by colonial botanists, sometimes collected as specimens, but which disappeared from the wild before they could be formally named and described by science. They exist now only as ghosts in the archived data.
Measuring the loss. Myanmar hosts over 800 orchid species.%%CITE_5%%%%CITE_6%% The forests around Pyin Oo Lwin were once particularly diverse. The historical records provide the proof, but modern surveys show a stark decline. The primary drivers of this loss have been deforestation and changes in land use.%%CITE_7%% During the colonial period, large areas of forest were cleared for timber.%%CITE_3%%%%CITE_8%% After independence, this pressure continued, compounded by the expansion of agriculture and charcoal production.
More recently, a specific threat to orchids has been their targeted collection for the ornamental and traditional medicine trades. Species from genera like Dendrobium, Bulbophyllum, and Paphiopedilum are highly sought after. This collection pressure can be devastatingly effective; in nearby Vietnam, the newly discovered slipper orchid, Paphiopedilum canhii, was harvested to local extinction within six months of its formal description. While the forests around Pyin Oo Lwin still exist, they are often "empty forests"—structurally intact but stripped of their most valuable and sensitive species. The meticulous records of colonial foresters, originally intended for resource exploitation, now serve as an invaluable tool for conservation, providing a precise measure of what has been lost.
💡Fun Facts
Pyin Oo Lwin was named Maymyo ("May's Town") after Colonel James May of the British Army, who was stationed there in 1887.
Teak wood was so critical for British naval shipbuilding that it was one of the primary motivations for the colonial annexation of Burma's forests.
The National Kandawgyi Botanical Gardens in Pyin Oo Lwin were established in 1915 and modeled on Kew Gardens in London. By 1942, they already housed a collection of 178 indigenous orchid species.
Some Kachin ethnic groups in northern Myanmar have an ancestral practice of using the fibers from the stems of the endangered orchid *Dendrobium moschatum* to create a silk-like thread for embroidery.
