VietNamNet Bridge – The Central Highlands, the largest forest area in Vietnam with 2.84 million hectares of forests, has never seen such a serious deforestation before. Over 130,000 hectares have been cleared just in the last five years.

25,700 hectares of forests lost ever year

The latest report of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) showed that 129,600 hectares of forests were eliminated in the years from 2007 to 2013 in five provinces in the Central Highlands, namely Gia Lai, Kon Tum, Dak Lak, Dak Nong and Lam Dong.

These included 107,400 hectares of natural forests and 22,200 hectares of planted forests. This means that every year, 25,700 hectares got lost in the region, the biggest loss rate so far.

Gia Lai province has lost 42,300 hectares of forests in the last five years, including 62,100 hectares of natural forests. During that time, the provincial authorities discovered 11,160 cases of violating the Forest Protection and Development Law.

Dak Lak lost 1,706 hectares of forests every year, while 9,000 cases of violations were discovered during the same time. The figures were 26,700 hectares and 6,700 cases.

The General Forestry Directorate has found from its latest survey that the forest coverage in the Central Highlands has reduced to 51.3 percent, while a lot of kinds of precious woods and special forestry products available only in the Central Highlands have disappeared.

A senior official of the General Forestry Directorate said this is not the final figure about the lost forests, predicting that tens of thousands of hectares of forests more would “disappear” when MARD examines the 1 million hectares of poor forests in the region.

Rubber project extirpated the forests

The directorate has pointed out that rubber and hydropower projects were the culprit that caused the elimination of 101,700 hectares of forests out of the 130,000 hectares lost in the last five years in the Central Highlands.

In the last five years alone, the local authorities have licensed 700 projects developed on 216,000 hectares of forestry land, of which 100,000 hectares of forests have been used for rubber growing.

Since September 2011, implementing the Prime Minister’s instruction No. 1685, the local authorities have revoked the licenses granted before to 76 projects which planned to use 8,000 hectares of forests and suspended 48 projects which planned to use 1,300 hectares.

Analysts said the Central Highlands in recent years have witnessed the “rubber rush” with people rushing to grow rubber on the poor forests. As a result, tens of thousands of hectares of forests have been eliminated.

Especially, the investors of many rubber projects have just chopped down trees to get wood, while they have not done anything for the rubber growing.

Nguyen Lan, Deputy Chair of Krong Bong district People’s Committee commented that a lot of enterprises registered to develop rubber projects just to seek profits from the wood they hope to exploit in the forests.

Y Rit Buon Ya, Deputy Director of the Dak Lak provincial Department of Agriculture and Development, complained that it is getting more and more difficult to manage and protect the forests because more and more rubber projects have been licensed.

Mot The Gioi