VietNamNet Bridge – Though the Cat Tien National Park has lost its last rhino, it still has bulls, bears, tigers, leopards… with more than 1,360 species of vascular plants and over 440 species plants that give precious timber.

The people who feel the pains of the forests

K’Ba in Go hamlet of Buon Go town in Cat Tien, in the last years of his life, always felt regret for killing two rhinos in the Cat Tien National Park. The skeleton of one of the two rhino is being displayed in Hanoi.

The village patriarch said when killing the rhinos, he simply said that Cat Tien forests were populous and rich, and the death of several rhinos would be of little importance.

The juniors of K’Ba, like K’Zit in Da Teh district, never heard about the “biodiversity” or the “world biological reserves”. They only knew that there are many plants and many animals in the Cat Tien forests. And they always tried to protect the forests with their own ways.

Dong Nai’s people have been told that Cat Tien should turn into the place for hydropower plants which will generate electricity, because Cat Tien forests are poor where there is no precious timber.

However, the people understand better than any others that Cat Tien is very rich. UNESCO had its every reason when recognizing Cat Tien as the world’s biological reserves in 2001. In 2005, the Bau Sau area in the national park was recognized as the 1,499th Ramsar site of the world and the second of Vietnam.

Nguyen Van Dien, Director of the Cat Tien National Park, when asked some months ago, when local newspapers reported the conclusion of the international experts that no more rhino exists in Cat Tien, just said that Cat Tien not only has rhino, but it has many other rare and precious plants and animals listed in the Red Book.

What Dien tried to say is that the loss of the last rhino does not mean that the Vietnamese people now can make light of protecting the Cat Tien national park.

Huynh Van Dau, Secretary of the Cat Tien District’s Party Committee, affirmed that the cultural and biological values of Cat Tien have been recognized.

“We have had working sessions with Dong Nai and Binh Phuoc provinces, and we would work out with Lam Dong provincial authorities to discuss what we should do to protect Cat Tien from hydropower plant projects,” Dau said.

Cat Tien is more than attractive

Dau denied the conclusion that it’d be better to reserve the several hundreds of hectares of the “poor forests” for the Dong Nai 6 and Dong Nai 6A hydropower plants, because the loss of the poor forests would in no way affect the biodiversity.

A survey conducted by the scientists headed by Dr. Vu Ngoc Long from the Tropical Biology Institute in the Cat Loc forest of Cat Tien, where the two projects are expected to be located, has found out 14 precious animal species.

Dau said that Cat Tien dreams of developing green tourism here, with the focus on the Dong Nai River and Thoat Y Vu cave – the natural landscapes which cannot be seen elsewhere in the world. In fact, Cat Tien has become the attractive destination for many tourists, domestic and foreign, in the last few years.

Thien Nhien