Thamin are grazers and opportunistic browsers that supplement their diet with wild fruit
and cultivated crops, particularly rice (Lekagul and McNeely, 1977). Current evidence
suggests that few pristine thamin habitats remain, and populations have been reported
to occupy habitats ranging from dry scrub and thorn forest to open deciduous forest
(Salter and Sayer, 1986; Wemmer, 1987).
Whitehead (1972) estimated the thamin population in Myanmar to be 4,000 animals in
the 1970s, but the first countrywide questionnaire distributed by the Wildlife Department
in 1992 estimated that only 2,200 deer remained within the country, with the largest
population (>1,200 deer) in the Chatthin Wildlife Sanctuary (Myint Aung, 1994).
Chatthin Wildlife Sanctuary (CWS) is comprised of secondary indaing (deciduous
dipterocarp) forest and mixed deciduous forest, and originally was established as a fuel
reserve forest in 1941. Sight surveys for thamin along 65 km line transects initially were
conducted at CWS in 1982 (Salter and Sayer, 1986) and were repeated annually from
1992 to 1996 by the Myanmar Wildlife Department (Table 1).
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