What is confirmed, and what is not

The first structured camera-trap survey in Karen State (Moo, Froese and Gray, 2017) recorded 31 mammals, 17 of them threatened, including tiger, leopard, Asian elephant, sun bear, Asiatic black bear, dhole and gaur. The authors credited Karen stewardship, including hunting taboos.4

At the village, 2017

Grier wrote to KESAN on 11 December 2017 that poachers had killed a sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) at Mu Aye Pu and that two orphan cubs were in a local pen. Paul Sein Twa replied that MAP was caring for them. Hanson added an unsourced report of a wounded tiger or leopard nearby, and mentioned a large python.12Later press disputed the aftercare. Those later accounts are on the Stories page. They do not erase the December 2017 letters.

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Hotel-school slides listed Sumatran rhinoceros among species the project would “protect.” That species is not in the 2017 survey and is treated here as promotional overreach unless a primary record appears.28

There is still no published bird, fish, insect or plant list for Mu Aye Pu village itself. That absence is part of the knowledge.