ASSOCIATION ANOULAK 
20 Arnoldia 78/3 « February 2021 
i 
The Annamite Mountains—known for complex topography, geography, 
forests in Indochina. 
James Maxwell, a renowned botanist from 
Chiang Mai University in Thailand, along with 
a team of wildlife biologists from a multitude of 
disciplines. Our mission was to assess wetland 
habitat on the Nakai Plateau—located high 
within the Annamite Mountains—before it was 
flooded by the reservoir. We would document 
the wetland vegetation and develop a wildlife 
management plan that included the restoration 
of habitat within an area known as the Nakai-— 
Nam Theun National Protected Area. Little did 
I know I would be acting as field coordinator 
once I arrived, a task that I was comfortable 
with from fifteen years of managing restoration 
projects in the United States but not nearly as 
easy in this new landscape and culture. 
The Discovery 
The Annamite Mountains contain some of the 
last relatively intact moist forests in Indochina, 
unique due to the region’s complex geology and 
climate, and relatively inaccessible due to the 
and climate—harbor some of the most-contiguous moist 
steep topography. Initially, working with Max- 
well proved extremely difficult. He could not 
understand why I had been hired on this project, 
since all my botanical experience was in the 
United States. He was standoffish and focused 
on collecting rare wildflowers he encountered. 
As we settled into the work, however, we 
bonded. He proved to be an exceptional mentor 
and friend, and in the years to come, I would 
stay with Maxwell and his wife in Thailand on 
multiple occasions. 
Our standard workdays were reminiscent 
of my first fieldwork experiences in the hot, 
humid wetlands of coastal Georgia, where I had 
grown up. When we arrived in Laos, it was the 
height of the dry season and unbearably hot 
in the late afternoons. We started at sunrise 
to avoid the heat, first eating a bowl of pho, a 
noodle soup loaded with fragrant mint, crunchy 
cabbage, long beans, and assorted leathery for- 
est leaves. In the field, we lugged our plant 
presses everywhere, as everything we collected 
