Wildlife in

Vietnam is one of the most biodiverse countries on the planet,

but it has also suffered from decades of deforestation and
habitat loss and remains a hot spot for wildlife trade. Today,
conservationists face an uphill battle to save Vietnam’s
beleaguered wildlife. By Tom DiChristopher.

t is mid-afternoon on a warm, sunny
day in Lam Dong Province, and as I steer
my motorbike around a bend on Highway
20 just past Madagui town, the four hours
I’ve spent on the road finally pay off. The
lanes narrow and plunge suddenly into
a mountain corridor draped with verdant
jungle flora. I let up on the accelerator and
take in the veil of foliage that cascades
down the mountainsides.
Two hours later and a few kilometres
down the road, the picture is very different.
I have joined Francois Bouvery, who is
taking me to see a sustainable agro-forestry
project in the surrounding mountains that
his company, Touton SA-France, buys
cocoa from. Shortly after pulling off the
highway, we have to yield the road to a
massive truck hauling thick trunks of lumber.
Just a few hundred metres ahead, Bouvery
asks me to pull over so he can take a photo
of a mountainside across the valley, where a
large swath of land is barren and burnt.
We spend the remainder of the afternoon
touring two pilot sites with a pair of Ma mi-
nority men from a nearby village who over-
see the project, a joint venture of Touton,
Winrock, the World Fund for Nature (WWF)
and local authorities. Bouvery assesses the
size and health of the cocoa plants that
grow beneath the preserved forest canopy,
asking about a few sickly looking trees and
reminding them that the price of cocoa
remains high on the commodities market.
Every now and then Bouvery gazes out
at the surrounding landscape, where forest
cover has been converted to plantations.
“Coffee, cashew, paper, rubber, tea—these
are the main killers of forest,” Bouvery told
me earlier in the day. At one point, he stops
me and points at the tangle of jungle brush
around our ankles; hundreds of insects hop
at our feet in a circus of activity. He motions
for me to listen to the sound of bird calls in
the canopy.
“You can see there are still a lot of birds,
a lot of life,” says Bouvery. Then, he points
through a break in the tree line, at yet
another swath of burnt earth that mars the
mountainside on the horizon. “You go over
there … nothing.”

18 asialife HCMC
There are possibly as few as 350
Indochinese tigers remaining in the
sub-region, and their habitat has been
reduced by more than 45 percent over
the course of the last decade

asialife HCMC 19
Setting the Stage
In the last 60 years, Vietnam’s landscape has
changed dramatically. Rampant habitat loss
has fragmented populations of the country’s
more than 1,500 species of amphibians,
birds, mammals and reptiles and made them
extraordinarily susceptible to today’s largest
threat: the wildlife trade.
Population pressure is certainly one part
of the problem. According to the Population
Reference Bureau, Vietnam’s population
grew from about 27 million people in 1950
to more than 85 million in mid-2007, with
population density increasing from 83 people
per square kilometre to 257. By comparison,
population density in mid-2007 was 128
people per square kilometre in Thailand,
79 in Cambodia, 74 in Myanmar and 25 in
Laos.
This rapid population growth has paral-
leled another trend: the transition from
community-based management of forests,
often by minority groups like the Ma, to top-
down governance. Beginning in the 1950s,
this lead to widespread conversion of land
for agricultural expansion and logging in
both fertile lowlands and the more rugged,
forested highlands.
20 asialife HCMC
In a 2001 review on the state of the envi-
ronment, the Vietnam Environment Adminis-
tration (VEA) pointed particularly to “selective
cutting for timber exploitation and clear cut-
ting for reclaiming land for agriculture” from
1954 to 1986 by state agriculture agencies,
which it says conducted little planning or
surveying. Within that period, Vietnam also
lost more than 2 million hectares of land to
the American War.
By 1991, there were 412 state forest
enterprises logging the country’s forests.
Logging rates peaked at 1.2 million cubic
metres of timber in 1992, the same year
the government made a sharp about face,
reducing quotas by 88 percent before ban-
ning the trade in timber outright in 1993.
The legacies of the pre-90s era, says the
VEA assessment, are “the large barren land
areas throughout the country, soil erosion
and landslides, drying up of water resources
and floods.”
Vietnam’s flora has not been the only
inheritor of this legacy. In 1998, the Forest
Protection Department reported that 200
species of bird and 120 other animals had
been wiped out over the last four decades.
Today, there are about 100 more species
threatened with extinction (see “Save Our
Species,” page 24), and unfortunately, there
are indicators that more species will be lost.
Tiger, Tiger Burning Out
The day after touring the Madagui agro-for-
estry site, I drive south to Cat Tien National
Park, back through Tan Phu. Tet is still two
weeks away, but already the world’s largest
feline is being reproduced in anticipation of
the Year of the Tiger—on product packag-
ing, municipal banners, Mobifone cards. It
seems everywhere you look are the iconic
black and orange stripes.
Everywhere, that is, but where it matters
most: in the wild.
Earlier this year, the WWF released Tigers
on the Brink, a special report that issues a
stern warning backed by dire statistics. Ac-
cording to the report, there are possibly as
few as 350 Indochinese tigers remaining in
the sub-region (down from 1,227 to 1,778 in
1998) and their habitat has been reduced by
more than 45 percent over the course of the
last decade.
Long ago forced out of prime hunting
grounds in lowland flood plains by human
development, the Indochinese tiger is now
 Where there is opportunity in
the environment, humans and
animals will clash
believed to reside in suboptimal habitats
like closed forests and infertile plains. Re-
establishing their range is the benchmark
strategy of an ambitious goal to achieve
population recovery by the next Year of the
Tiger in 2022.
Vietnam is part of that plan, with the
Lower Mekong Dry Forests Ecoregion
and Southern-Central Annamites already
identified as global priority tiger landscapes.
But with hunting still occurring in Vietnam’s
protected areas, the question is whether
Vietnam has the capacity to protect a new
population of Indochinese tigers.
Deadly Ground
In 1994, Vietnam acceded to the Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Spe-
cies of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). While
the treaty to end the illegal wildlife trade
has provided guidelines to bring domestic
laws in line with international standards, it
perhaps came too late.
Vietnam’s commitments to conservation
have coincided with a dramatic surge in the
global wildlife trade. In China, demand for
wildlife products and exotic pets has driven
the multi-billion dollar global trade more than
in any other country. The second largest
market, the United States, has seen demand
grow from USD $1.2 billion to $2.8 billion
between 2000 and 2007, according to an
annual report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
In this climate, biodiversity-rich countries
like Vietnam that lack the capacity to fight
traffickers have become prime targets. Com-
pounding the problem is the sharp rise in
domestic demand for wildlife products and
pets in recent years.
In his 2008 paper, Wildlife Trading in
Vietnam: Situations, Causes, and Solutions,
Nguyen Van Song of the Hanoi University of
Agriculture explained how a highly orga-
nized network of wildlife traders is able to
flourish. By going undercover, Song and his
interviewers identified nine channels that
link hunters to consumers and a variety of
methods for evading authorities, from hiding
protected species among shipments of legal
wildlife trade to offering “secret” menus at
restaurants.
The report also belies the assumption that
wildlife enforcement failures have everything
to do with corruption. While numerous
reports have proved that corruption remains
a problem, what some researchers believe
is the larger issue is the imbalance be-
tween profits from the wildlife trade and the
resources available to provincial authorities
and the Forest Protection Department (FPD)
to tackle poaching and trafficking.
From 1997 to 2000, profits from the
wildlife trade in Vietnam equaled USD $67
million, while authorities raised only $21
million in fines in the same period. Song’s
research also revealed that the average FPD
employee’s monthly pay is roughly equivalent
to daily profits at restaurants serving illegal
wildlife. For this wage, the average FPD
staffer is responsible for 1,400 hectares of
forest, estimates Song.
Wildlife traders don’t only outspend au-
thorities; they also have them outgunned.
In recent years, encounters with poachers
and illegal loggers have turned lethal. In No-
vember 2005, one ranger was killed and an-
other injured in Haiphong when the minibus
they were inspecting drove off at high speed
with the two on top. And just last October, a
forest ranger was beaten to death by three
illegal loggers in his custody.
But even if tomorrow rangers were given
the means to tackle the wildlife trade head
asialife HCMC 21
 Without proper enforcement of laws,
recovery of forest and habitat does not
necessarily benefit wildlife
on, there remains another question: What
would they do with the thousands of animals
that such a campaign would turn up?
Sanctuary
While waiting for an afternoon interview at
Cat Tien, I visit the one-hectare bear enclo-
sure built by Free the Bears. At first the five
Asiatic black bears are elusive, but eventu-
ally, they wander out, their tussled black
manes swaying as they slouch towards the
bathing pool just below the viewing station.
From here, it looks as though they don’t
have a care in the world—which makes
them some of the luckier bears in Vietnam.
The Asiatic black bear and sun bear
perhaps better illustrate Vietnam’s shortfall
in capacity than any other species. Fifteen
years ago, Vietnam reiterated its ban on bear
bile farming, the practice in which crude
surgical methods are used to drain bears’
gall bladders of bile, primarily for use in tra-
ditional Chinese medicine. But today, about
4,500 bears remain in captivity.
The problem, says Matt Hunt, CEO of
international NGO Free the Bears, is that
few captive bears can ever be released
back into the wild. “For rehabilitation to take
place,” says Hunt, “you need a very suitable
22 asialife HCMC
candidate, which would be a young cub that
hasn’t been kept for a long time in captivity
and has been recently captured from the
wild.”
Given the conditions in which most bears
are kept, suitable candidates are rare.
This means that most bears have re-
mained in the custody of ostensibly reformed
bear bile farmers. And although the govern-
ment has microchipped captives to prevent
trafficking and distinguish them from new
wild captures, many fear that bile extraction
continues.
Two weeks prior to my visit to Cat Tien,
the Hong Kong-based Animals Asia Founda-
tion (AAF) rescued 19 Asiatic black bears
from desperate conditions at a farm in Binh
Duong. The bears had been held for six to
seven years and were milked for bile regu-
larly. A post-mortem examination revealed a
euthanized bear was so ravaged by disease
that its organs were unrecognizable.
AAF transported the bears to a sanctuary
in Tam Dao National Park, which opened in
May 2009. Before sanctuaries such as this
were built, Hunt says, enforcement wasn’t a
viable option; violators could be prosecuted,
but there was nowhere to place the bears.
“Our job here is to enable the government
to be able to enforce the international laws,”
says Hunt. “The legislation is now in place.
The monitoring is starting. The sanctuaries
for placement of bears are being built. So
the stars are finally lining up to enable proper
enforcement of international laws.”
This spring, Free the Bears and Wildlife
at Risk will open a new sanctuary with the
capacity to hold 60 bears in Kien Giang
Province near the Gulf of Thailand. The plan
is to fund the sanctuary in the long term with
ecotourism profits, a model Hunt would like
to implement in other parts of Vietnam where
the opportunity arises. That opportunity,
however, is very much contingent upon the
recovery of Vietnam’s forests and habitats.
Where Worlds Meet
On the surface, it seems that Vietnam has
made significant strides in increasing forest
cover and habitat since reversing its poli-
cies in the 1990s. In its 2005 Global Forest
Resources Assessment, the United Nations
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
reported that from 2000 to 2005, Vietnam
experienced the third largest annual net gain
in forest area (241,000 hectares per year) of
all nations surveyed.
However, without proper enforcement of
 Despite their skill in evading the human
eye, it’s becoming difficult for elephants
to avoid human settlements
laws, recovery of forest and habitat does
not necessarily benefit wildlife; recent history
has proven that where there’s opportunity in
the environment, humans and animals will
clash.
Matt Maltby of Fauna & Flora International
has been tracking the migratory patterns of
Asian elephants and studying their numbers
along the Cambodia-Vietnam border for
the past four years. In that time, he’s never
seen an elephant in the wild, but in at least
one sense, this is a good thing; their elusive
nature helps elephants survive.
Despite their skill in evading the human
eye, it’s becoming difficult for elephants to
avoid human settlements. Much of their
prime habitat in the area Maltby studies—
lowland scrublands and pristine primary
forest—has been converted for agriculture
or logged, leaving them to travel through
secondary forests. The periphery of these
forests is where many subsistence farmers
eek out a living.
To prevent the property damage that
results from migratory traffic and sometimes
leads to injury or death of elephants, Maltby
and his Cambodian field team visit vil-
lages to advise on fence-building and crop
diversification, but it’s time-intensive work.
“Sometimes it takes up to one or two years
to build the trust,” says Maltby. “And then
word spreads around and then it gets easier
to do.”
Another concern is what Maltby calls
the “rogue practices” of some plantation
companies. In particular, he points out the
clear-cutting of huge blocks of land, which
can put humans and elephants on a colli-
sion course.
“If the forest is fragmented, the elephants
will still come back,” says Maltby, “so often
biodiversity will lose against development.”
This may be of particular concern in
Vietnam; the FAO reported that the country
experienced the fourth largest increase in
productive forest plantation among the na-
tions surveyed from 2000 to 2005.
Maltby insists that his team is not against
plantations, but says each site where
agriculture and elephant migration intersect
needs its own solution. This conclusion
could be applied to many aspects of con-
servation. Deforestation, persecution of ani-
mals and opportunistic hunting of protected
species occur in different areas for different
reasons. What is becoming evident is that
local circumstances need to be considered
in order to create long-term change.
Turning Back Time
In Madagui, Francois Bouvery is happy with
the cocoa yield. His company, Touton, recently
bought their first shipment—130 kilos at mar-
ket price, about $3,000 per ton. It’s not much,
but it’s a promising start for the Ma village.
Before we head back to our motorbikes, we
stop by one more area. Our Ma guides want
to show us an area that has benefited from
the new irrigation system. Here, the cocoa
trees are lush and healthy, and everyone gets
together for a photo in front of a particularly
fruitful arboreal specimen.
Projects like this are just one small part of
the overall solution, but on a symbolic level, it
is a potent example of the potential to reverse
the destructive trends of previous decades.
That minority groups such as the Ma have be-
come the stewards of forest management and
habitat recovery seems to suggest the desire
to return to an era of sustainable interaction
between Vietnam’s people and its environ-
ment. Whether or not that proves possible is
yet to be seen.
For more information on the organizations
discussed here, their programmes and how
you can help, visit the editorial team’s blog
at asialife.wordpress.com.
asialife HCMC 23