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By Root 1276 0

In 1994, when Vietnam signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which bans the traffic in animals or plants facing extinction, the species list identified 365 animal species in need of urgent protection. Among these, the Java rhino, the world’s rarest large mammal, is reduced to a mere five to eight animals, while no fewer than five of the world’s most endangered primate species, including the golden-headed (or Cat Ba) langur and the Tonkin snub-nosed langur, survive in small isolated communities in the northern forests. Other severely endangered species include the Indochina tiger and Asian elephant. Vietnam is also home to around 850 species of birds, with the highest number of endemic species in mainland Southeast Asia. Again, many of these are under threat of extinction, including the Vietnamese pheasant, small numbers of which were recently recorded in Ha Tinh and Quang Binh provinces.

Hunting continues to be a vital source of local income, as a walk round Vietnamese markets soon reveals. Wild animals and birds are sought after for their meat or to satisfy the demand for medicinal products and live specimens, an often illegal (but extremely lucrative) business. Since the border with China was re-opened in the early 1990s, smuggling of rare species has increased, among them the Asiatic black bear, whose gall bladder is prized as a cure for fevers and liver problems; relentless hunting has decimated the population to small numbers in the north. Similarly, Vietnam’s population of wild Asian elephants is now reduced to fewer than one hundred individuals, down from two thousand in the 1970s. Not only has their habitat along the Cambodian border declined, but after 1975 poachers began hunting elephants for their tusks. Conservationists hope to maintain two or three viable populations in Dak Lak Province, where domesticated elephants are still used for transport and forestry work.

Nevertheless, quite large areas of the Vietnamese interior remain amazingly untouched, especially the Truong Son Mountains north of the Hai Van Pass, the southern central highlands and lowland forests of the Mekong Delta. These isolated areas are rich in biodiversity and have yielded spectacular discoveries in recent years, with much still to be explored. In 1992, Dr John MacKinnon and a team of Vietnamese biologists working in the Vu Quang Nature Reserve, an area of steamy, impenetrable jungle on the Lao border, identified a species of ox new to science, now known as the saola. Two years later the giant muntjac, a previously unknown species of deer, and a new carp were found in the same region, followed in 1997 by a smaller type of muntjac deer and the grey-shanked douc langur, and in 1999 by a striped rabbit thought to be related to the now extinct Sumatran striped rabbit. Three new bird species were also discovered in the late 1990s in the mountains of Kon Tum province: two types of laughing thrush and the black-crowned barwing.

An all-out effort is being made to protect this “biological gold mine” and other similar areas both within Vietnam and over the border in Laos. After the saola was discovered, the reserve was put strictly off limits and the total protected area enlarged to almost 160,000 hectares, with buffer zones and corridors linking the reserve to conservation areas in Laos. The task is fraught with difficulties, such as achieving cross-border co-operation and establishing effective policing of the reserve – especially against poaching and illegal logging – with inadequate personnel and financial resources. At the same time, the authorities have been working to find alternative sources of income and food for people living in or near the reserve, and carrying out educational work on the importance of conservation and its relevance to their daily lives.

In a related scheme, special protection areas have also been established around Yok Don and Ba Be national parks as part of a project to establish models of stable biodiversity conservation. The government has also been adding to the number of national