Bio- bridges
By linking forests together, ecologists in Vietnam hope that wildlife can mix, mingle and breed.
“I HAVE never been in a forest with four species that are about to go extinct,” said Roger Wilson of the Khe Nuoc Trong ( KNT) forest in Quang Binh Province, north of Hue in central Vietnam.
This fellow has been doing conservation work for 45 years of his life in three different continents, so what he says carries weight. The news gets worse: altogether, there are 40 other species, slightly less threatened, but still endangered.
“If nothing is done they will all be gone not by our children’s lifetime, but in our very own lifetime.”
Wilson, who is Director of Conservation for World Land Trust ( WLT), believes that the Edwards’s Pheasant, one of the four critically endangered species, is probably already extinct in the wild.
Fortunately however, there are about 1,000 remaining in captivity worldwide, and WLT may try to reintroduce them into the wild in KNT.
WLT programme development officer Natalie Singleton said the other three critically endangered species are the Bourret’s Box Turtle and two mammals, the Saola and Sunda Pangolin.
The Pangolin is one of the most heavily trafficked animals in the world – their meat, scales and skin are used for clothing and medicine.
The Saola is nicknamed the “Asian Unicorn” due to its rarity and because it looks like it has one horn when seen from the side.
The Bourret’s Box Turtles are also at risk of poaching as they are worth thousands of US dollars and sold to China to make traditional medicine.
One of the main difficulties faced by KNT is that it is only managed as a “watershed forest”. This means that the trees are protected as they would affect the water streams which supply water to thousands of people in nearby cities and local communities. But animal conservation is not the main priorty.
Viet Nature Conservation Centre president Pham Tuan Anh said that only selected species are protected but others are not.
“The area has such rich biodiversity. But there are many traps that catch animals indiscriminately. A trap doesn’t know which animals are protected or endangered.”
Singleton added that there are another seven species which are endangered in KNT namely the Large Antlered Muntjac, Red- Shanked Douc Langur, Southern White- Cheeked Gibbon, Hatinh Langur, and three turtle species. Plus another 28 in the IUCN ( international Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of threatened species which consists of mammals, amphibians and reptiles.
The hunting and snaring has decimated all these animals.
The central city of Da Nang has decided to use the endangered Red- Shanked Douc Langur as the symbol for the 2017 AsiaPacific Economic Cooperation ( APEC) forum it is hosting next year to underline the importance of its conservation.
At 20,000 hectares, KNT is a huge forest. It is part of the much larger Truong Son Key Biodiversity Area of around 145,000 hectares. Being one of the key remaining areas of wet, lowland evergreen forest, KNT is under great threat from logging.
“High- value hardwoods are selectively taken out, degrading the forest,” said Singleton. “The forest here tends to be of slow- growing hardwoods that take many years to mature. This provides high- quality timber for making furniture. But unfortunately, this causes the forest to degrade as the trees take years to recover.”
Pham said they are now currently working with local authorities to elevate the level of protection of KNT to that of a Nature Reserve.
Conservationists in Vietnam want to link up different forests to create a bigger space where animals can mingle and breed.
They hope to use the KNT forest to link up other conservation areas, namely Bac Huong Hoa Nature Reserve in the south and Phong Nha- Ke Bang in the north.
Singleton said the fragmentation of habitats is a big problem, and these need to be reconnected for animals to grow in numbers.
“When habitats are divided up, it leaves small, isolated populations of animals,” she explained. “For these populations to be viable, we need to connect them so they can interbreed. We can do this by creating a wildlife corridor or bio- bridge.”