Dawna Range

The Dawna Range forms the western edge of the Thai highlands and a long upland boundary within eastern Myanmar. It begins in Kayah State where it meets the Daen Lao Range, then follows Kayin State southward for about 350 kilometres, ending near Umphang on the Thai-Myanmar border west of Kamphaeng Phet. Mela Taung reaches 2,080 metres. East of the Salween, its steep, narrow ridges rise abruptly from lower country, while the parallel Tenasserim Hills continue the structure farther south and the Karen Hills extend the same upland world northward.

The moist slopes carry tropical and subtropical broadleaf forest, part of a broader Kayah-Karen/Tenasserim ecoregion. Asian elephants, tigers and Fea's muntjac live here, as do the endangered plain-pouched hornbill and Gurney's pitta. Protected areas on the Thai side form part of the Western Forest Complex. Karen and Mon communities used the eastern Dawna as a refuge and route through dense forest, while passes connected upland villages with the Salween and Thai plains. Steep relief and dense forest make movement difficult, yet the range remains a corridor and refuge as well as a barrier. The range is a mountain corridor, a barrier and a refuge whose physical and political meanings overlap.