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A handful of scientists have been struggling to regreen Vietnam since
before the war ended there more than 16 years ago. Now they are concerned
about theenvironmental impact of the nation’s rapid pace of development.
Vietnam is in an ecological race against time. While the Soviet Union is
calling in billions of dollars of loans – borrowed to rebuild the country’s
war-shattered infra-structure – investors from neighbouring countries are
rushing in to tap Vietnam’s offshore oil reserves, rich coastal fisheries
and mineral resources.

Already, the Vietnamese are razing 200 000 hectares of tropical forest
each year for export to Thailand and Japan, thereby endangering the unique
wildlife species that inhabit them. They are attempting to replace the forest
by replant-ing some 500 million trees each year, but even this is not enough.
Bullock carts filled with saplings for the massive replanting scheme, started
by the late president Ho Chi Minh more than 30 years ago, will soon be outnumbered
by motorised logging trucks straining under the weight of felled trees,
many of them hundreds of years old.

‘The question arises,’ says Professor Vo Quy, founder of Vietnam’s growing
environmental movement, ‘can Vietnam replant fast enough? We should stop
cutting down our primary forest and set up the replanting of our wasteland,
which now covers nearly 40 per cent of the country.’

Vo Quy, of the University of Hanoi, is an ornithologist who has been
teaching the principles of conservation in the field and the classroom for
over 40 years. He is the main architect of the country’s national plan for
environmental recovery, drawn up with a team of scientists from provinces
throughout the country – most of whom are his students.

During the Vietnam War, Vo Quy and a group of unarmed scientists risked
their lives by crossing into the fighting zones near the 17th parallel to
check on the environmental effects of the war. This was shortly after the
massive defoliation raids by American and South Vietnamese troops had laid
waste to some 2 million hectares of forest and farmland. Ever since that
first visit, Vo Quy and his colleagues have been determined to regreen their
war-scarred land (‘The regreening of Vietnam’, ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ, 23 June 1988).

But conservationists in Vietnam have been working on a shoestring budget.
In 1987, the Vietnamese forestry ministry developed a plan to replant 1.5
million hectares of barren hills and to step up the rehabilitation of degraded
forests. Unfortunately, lack of resources has thwarted these efforts. As
a result, the country is not replanting nearly quickly enough and its people
cannot even gather enough timber to build their houses.

In northern Vietnam, villagers are literally hacking away at the fabled
dome-shaped mountains that have inspired poets and painters for centuries.
Unable to find or make materials with which to replace the millions of homes
destroyed during the war – or to meet the demands of one of the fastest-growing
populations in the world – people are using limestone from the mountains
to construct houses. Nearby, on the bald hillsides – deforested now for
years – water rushes down into the valley, carrying with it precious topsoil.
In the dry season the hills and fields turn to dust while the young grass
burns up in the intense heat of the midday sun. Neither crops nor saplings
can survive these extreme conditions of flooding and drought.

In search of any kind of income, the people are turning their sights
on a new source of money: the country’s precious wild-life. During a recent
visit to Hanoi, conservationists expressed dismay over the region’s burgeoning
wildlife trade, which is draining Indochina of some of the rarest animals
in the world.

Wildlife markets in both Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi are spilling onto
the pavements. Just outside a small cafe in Hanoi the owners have set up
several cages containing macaques, cobras and other reptiles. At the Ho
Chi Minh City wildlife market, located on the edge of the Saigon River,
dozens of endangered species are sold to visiting Asian businessmen at rock-bottom
prices. They are then exported from the country, which is not yet a member
of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of World
Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Last month, four Malayan sun bears, three clouded leopards, dozens of
swamp tortoises and crocodiles, wild dogs, pelicans and several seriously
threatened species of primates were literally sold down the Saigon River
to traders from Japan, Thailand, Taiwan and Singapore. Ships from these
countries line the majestic waterway for kilometres. An evening boat ride
along the Saigon River, where the ships’ lights beam across the waters in
a brilliant, multicoloured spectacle, reveals the ease with which live animals
and wildlife products can move in and out of the country, given the lack
of enforced trade regulations. Almost every tourist hotel lobby in Ho Chi
Minh City is jammed with wildlife products, including ivory, tortoiseshell,
tiger, leopard and bear trophies, all of which are banned under Appendix
I of CITES.

Further south on the Dong Nai River, thousands of logs are floated out
for sale to countries such as Japan and Thailand. Although a ban on the
sale of raw logs was suppos-edly declared by Vietnam early last year, it
is not enforced. Nor are the country’s hunting laws, which forbid the killing
of endangered species such as the kouprey or wild forest ox, the Francois
langur, the tiger, the elephant and the recently rediscovered Javan rhino.

Death of a Javan rhino

Recently, Vietnamese officials confirmed the death of a Javan rhino,
believed to be the most endangered large mammal in the world. The tragic
news was revealed just days after a scientist from the World Wide Fund for
Nature (WWF), Charles Santiapillai, a specialist in Asian rhinos and elephants,
had conducted a survey confirming the survival of between 8 and 12 Javan
rhinos in Nam Cat National Park and the adjacent province of Lam Dong. The
only other known population of Javan rhino is in Ujung Kulon National Park
in Indonesia. With luck, Santiapillai’s recommendation that the Vietnamese
expand the animal’s protected range and establish a 100 000-hectare sanctuary
for it could still save the rhino, providing it is done quickly. ‘This small
population – if thoroughly protected – has every chance of increasing in
number. These animals should not be abandoned on the unproven hypothesis
that genetic degeneration will set in and automatically eliminate them,’
says Santiapillai.

But according to Vo Thanh Son of the University of Hanoi, who conducted
Vietnam’s first Javan rhino survey in 1989 with George Schaller, director
of the US-based Wildlife Conservation International, four forestry schemes
are planned in the centre of the Javan rhino’s habitat. Vo Thanh Son warns
that if this plan is carried out, the habitat of the Javan rhino in Vietnam
would effectively disappear – and the rhinos with it.

The hide and skeleton of the recently murdered rhino have been taken
into custody, but the rhino’s horn, which can fetch up to $60 000 per kilogram,
has mysteriously disappeared. The horn of the last rhino killed in Vietnam,
less than two years ago, met the same fate. Conservationists, including
Vo Thanh Son, believe that prison terms for killing rhinos should be a minimum
of three years, with more serious consequences for the traders. The local
authorities who arrested the rhino poacher wrote to Vo Quy’s centre at the
University of Hanoi last month pleading for help in protecting the rhino.
Vo Quy has ordered more posters about the rhino to be distributed in the
area and has pledged to help raise funds to set up guard posts. However,
guarding mosquito-infested reserves like Nam Cat Tien is a risky proposition.
Two park wardens died from an incurable form of malaria this year while
on duty in the rhino reserve. Meanwhile, another group of Vietnamese wildlife
researchers barely escaped death during an expedition to study kouprey in
the borderlands between Cambodia and Vietnam. The team, led by Roger Cox,
a British scientist from the Kouprey Conservation Trust, a joint venture
between six zoos (Omaha, London, Cincinnati, New York, St Louis and San
Diego), were fired at by a group of insurgents operating in the area. Cox
escaped injury but several of his Vietnamese companions suffered gunshot
wounds from an automatic rifle. None of the group died, but two of the elephants
they were travelling on panicked and ran off with their field notes and
camera equipment.

One of the injured scientists, Ha Dinh Duc, says that he is prepared
to continue his research. He is also dedicated, he says, to working to save
the white-headed leaf-eating monkey (Trachypithecus francoisi poliocephalus,
one of the four types of Francois langur) – which, like the Javan rhino,
is being pushed to the brink of extinction in Vietnam. The last stronghold
for this monkey is the spectacularly beautiful limestones cliffs in Ha Long
Bay near Haiphong, part of which was recently declared a national park.
But big ships come into the Haiphong port area from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan
and Singapore, and when they leave, the wildlife, logs and fish go with
them by the tonne. According to local people, six white-headed leaf-eating
monkeys – representing between 20 and 30 per cent of the only remaining
population in Vietnam – were trapped and sold this year. It is believed
one of the monkeys may have died from injuries sustained during capture.

The once beautiful waters of Ha Long Bay are also beginning to suffer
from serious oil pollution and overfishing. It is becoming harder to find
large fish to eat. A kilogram of fish is sold locally for about 1000 dong
(5 pence), but the crew of foreign ships offer the fishermen 1000 dong per
fish, regardless of size. Fish that may be smaller than a mouthful are being
bought up, dropped into the ships’ aquariums to be raised to full size,
and then sold to Hong Kong restaurants. Meanwhile, the local fish population
is dropping drastically because few fish ever reach maturity.

As fish become scarcer, fishermen resort to ever more drastic methods
to get their catch. In particular, the practice of dynamiting the bay’s
coral reefs poses a serious threat to the future of the fishing industry.
Reefs are dynamited to stun fish, enabling fishermen to catch them more
easily. But this also kills off the fishes’ source of life, the reef itself.

Another newly declared national park 100 miles off the southeast coast
of Vietnam, in the South China Sea, could go the way of Haiphong harbour
if development is not strictly controlled. An archipelago of 14 virtually
unspoilt islands, the Con Dao National Park, has been proposed as the site
of a new port for ships passing through a long-discussed channel between
Malaysia and Thailand. Some officials have said they hope this will turn
the area into a ‘new Hong Kong’. These plans have been shelved temporarily,
as the principal financier of the project was to have been the Soviet Union,
but they could be revived as soon as new finance becomes available.

The local inhabitants of the islands are trying to protect them from
unbridled exploitation. The bountiful seas surrounding the archipelago provide
food for some 2000 residents, 1000 of whom are soldiers. The remainder are
mainly families of men who were imprisoned there during the Vietnam War.
Originally, the prison was built by a Vietnamese emperor who exiled his
wife and daughter there because they objected to the presence of French
colonialists in the ancient imperial capital of Hu. The prison was later
expanded to hold Vietnamese pris-oners during French colonial times, and
Vietcong prisoners during the Vietnam War.

Ho Chin Minh’s message

Only the largest island is inhabited and cultivated. The others are
covered mainly by tropical forest, rich in wildlife including white-bellied
sea eagles, Javan ducks, macaques, wild boar, flying squirrels, foam-nesting
frogs and fruit bats. Although a number of conservation regulations have
been introduced on the islands, the growing trade in shark fins, tropical
fish, swifts’ nests and turtle carapaces threatens their fragile ecosystems.
The swifts’ nests are supposedly harvested on a sustainable basis, but the
greed of the Japanese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Thai markets for the islands’
riches is already beginning to have an impact on their natural resources.

Following several visits by Vo Quy and fellow scientists from Hanoi,
the hunting of turtle eggs and turtles, giant clams, coral and island-based
species has been banned. Ba Giao, the chairman of the islands, told me during
my last visit there that every time the professor visited, the islands lost
something. ‘The first time he recommended we stop hunting the turtles, the
second time he asked us to stop collecting coral and to outlaw dynamiting,
and the third time he said we should stop eating the giant clams. We wonder
what will be next,’ he says with a good-natured smile.

Vietnam’s State Committee for Science and Technology says the country
needs development, but it is concerned over the possibility of oil spills
and the evidence of growing marine pollution. Backing the committee’s view,
Vo Quy warned in Hanoi this April: ‘It would be tragic to see the effort
we have extended to restore our environment sacrificed to unsustainable
development. Our country needs to develop and our living standards need
to improve. Yet it would be very sad if the forests we lost to Agent Orange
and then replanted with such care over the years were destroyed by air pollution.’

To step up protection of the country’s forests in the tradition of Ho
Chi Minh, Vo Quy invited former Commander-in-Chief of the North Vietnamese
Army, General Vo Nguyen Giap, to participate in a tree-planting ceremony
with children at the late president’s memorial – held on 30 April this year,
the 16th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.

Co-architect of the country’s national conservation strategy and a converted
conservationist, General Giap paused to talk to the children who had helped
him to plant the small fig tree. He reminded them that Ho Chi Minh had started
the country’s regreening movement. He told them of Uncle Ho’s wishes that
trees be planted on hills in his memory. He paraphrased the last wishes
of Ho Chi Minh: ‘With the passage of time these (memorial trees) will form
forests which will benefit the landscape and agriculture. Care for the trees
should be entrusted to local old people.’

In the distance stood Ho Chi Minh’s tomb, a grand mausoleum. The ageing
general, tending the young sapling, was a symbolic reminder that the country
was trying to get Uncle Ho’s message right – but that time was running out.

Elizabeth Kemf, author of Month of Pure Light: The Regreening of Vietnam,
(Women’s Press, London), is chief consultant for the forthcoming BBC/WNET
nature film Vietnam: A Country, Not a War, in which she also appears.