Indo-Burma

Formerly including the Himalaya chain and the associated foothills in Nepal, Bhutan, and India, Indo-Burma has now been more narrowly redefined as the Indo-Chinese subregion.

[1] The transition to the Sundaland Hotspot in the south occurs on the Thai-Malay Peninsula, the boundary between the two hotspots is represented by the Kangar-Pattani Line, which cuts across the Thailand-Malaysia border, though some analyses indicate that the phytogeographical and zoogeographical transition between the Sundaland and Indo-Burma biotas may lie just to the north of the Isthmus of Kra, associated with a gradual change from wet seasonal evergreen dipterocarp rainforest to mixed moist deciduous forest.

In addition, a wide variety of distinctive, localized vegetation formations occur in Indo-Burma, including lowland floodplain swamps, mangroves, and seasonally inundated grasslands.

[citation needed] The area includes portions of eastern India (including the Andaman and Nicobar Islands), the eastern part of Bangladesh (Chittagong hill tracts), southernmost China, most of Myanmar (excluding the northern tip), most of Thailand (excluding the southern tip), and all of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

[citation needed][7] Ten species of the Indo-Burma are threatened: saola, Eld's deer, Cat Ba langur, fishing cat, giant ibis, Mekong giant catfish, spoon-billed sandpiper, red-headed vulture and white-rumped vulture, sarus crane and the Irrawaddy dolphin.

Reservoir operation procedures result in occasional or regular flooding of sandbars, sandbanks, stretches of channel mosaic, and other habitats that would normally be exposed during the dry season, with impacts on nesting bird and turtle species.

[citation needed] The area also holds endemism in freshwater turtle species, most of which are threatened with extinction, due to over-harvesting and extensive habitat loss.