With her special love for nature and great desire to contribute to protecting the environment and wildlife, Le Thi Trang, a consultant for many wildlife conservation projects in Da Nang, has many practical activities in education and raising people's awareness about environmental protection. Trang is affectionately called ‘environmental protection ambassador’.
Le Thi Trang carries out communication activities to raise awareness about the biodiversity in Da Nang among pupils in Hai Chau District.
Trang’s great love for the environment has been gradually formed through joining and leading an environmental club at the Da Nang University of Science and Technology, and taking part in media activities to raise public awareness for the community about the importance of protecting the environment and wildlife. In 2007, Trang became a volunteer for the Education for Nature Viet Nam (ENV).
After university graduation, Trang worked for a representative office of ENV in Central Viet Nam. She was tasked with investigating and surveying wildlife trapping and trading activities in Central Viet Nam and Central Highlands regions.
To have accurate survey data on animal species, Trang and other members of ENV made long trips to remote, dangerous forests in many provinces and cities. They even faced scrutiny and pursuit by illegal animal hunters and traders.
From the abovementioned activities, Trang had an overall understanding of the current situation of illegal wildlife trapping and trading activities, and understood why wild animals in forests increasingly declined, and many rare animal species were at risk of extinction.
In 2013, Trang began working at the Green Viet Water Biodiversity Conservation Center (GreenViet) with a mission of helping Da Nang people know and be proud of brown-shanked douc langurs, a rare and endangered primate species in Viet Nam.
To carry out that mission, she made dozens of trips to forests to survey and capture living characteristics. From those trips, she had a very valuable "treasure" and drew a "diagram" to intervene for conservation and sustainable development.
During her working at the GreenViet, Trang and her companion group carried out many communication activities to raise public awareness in protecting animals. Included were the ‘Son Tra Forest Knights’ programme, and outdoor picnics ‘I love Son Tra’ on Sundays every month for residents and tourists coming to Son Tra Peninsula.
In 2015, the Future for Nature named Trang among the world’s 10 best young conservationists.
“Being enrolled in Future for Nature is a great motivation for me to complete the projects ahead. I want to change people's perception that protecting wild animals is a common obligation, not just the job of forest rangers and conservationists" Trang said.
From that success, Trang increasingly committed herself to wildlife and environmental protection work.
In 2016, Trang participated in the TIPS Primate Conservationist Training Course - Advanced Training in Wildlife Conservation and Community Engagement, by Dr. Chia Tan and the San Diego Zoo held in Madison, Sandiego and Chicago, the USA.
One year later, Trang had the opportunity to take part in a capacity-building workshop on strategic communications in Bangkok, Thailand. The workshop was organised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in collaboration with Mangroves for the Future (MFF) and the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF).
She once visited and worked in four US states as a delegate of the IVLP programme: Climate Change and Renewable Energy organised by the US Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City.
The knowledge gathered from overseas training courses and domestic and international scientific conferences has been researched and applied by Le Thi Trang with high efficiency in wildlife conservation and development as well as communication work.
In 2020, the US Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) named Trang one of the top 10 Hotspot Heroes in the world to honour her dedication to protection and conservation of wildlife in Da Nang.
Currently, Trang is a consultant for many conservation projects to implement communication programmes and events on forest and wildlife protection for Community Conservation group in the buffer zones of National Parks and conservation areas in the Central Viet Nam and Central Highlands regions.
At the same time, Trang is now registering for operations for a nature conservation educational organisation in order to increase activities targeting children, helping them build pride in natural resources, thereby being actively involved in protecting the natural resources of the homeland.
Reporting by Quynh Nhu - Translating by M.Dung