The Circular No. 47 of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) which allows exploiting 160 species of wild beast for commercial purposes has caused big worries.
Wildlife protection organizations, forest owners and sanctuaries have all expressed their worries that when many species of wild beast can be exploited for commercial purposes, other wildlife species would also “be involved in misfortune.”
The circular which takes effects from November 9, 2012, stipulates the conditions for exploiting, breeding normal wild breast. Institutions and individuals have to ask for the permission from competent agencies and the agreement from the forest owners, and they also have to satisfy some other requirements.
Loosened control would lead to bad consequences
Dr Nguyen Xuan Dang from the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources, while highly appreciating the newly promulgated document, saying that the legal document can serve as the tool to deal with the violations in the exploitation and breeding normal wild breast, said that the loosened control would lead to unexpected negative impacts.
Dang said one would say he goes to forests to exploit common animals, but he would hunt for wildlife as well and escape from the dragnet of the law.
Vu Thi Quyen, the founding director of ENV (Education for Nature Vietnam), said that local authorities meet some problems in defining animal species, while exploiters, traders and farmers especially lack knowledge about the field.
Therefore, Quyen said, it would be better only to allow to exploit some animal species which can be easily recognized and differentiated. Meanwhile, the species with similar characteristics, thus making it difficult to differentiate them, should be exploited only for scientific research purpose.
Jack Todoff, a wild bird specialist, also said that the animal breeding for commercial purposes may cause big difficulties to the enforcement of the laws, because it is very difficult to tell the difference between the legal animal individuals born under the conditions of captivity and the individuals illegally caught from the wild.
Meanwhile, Simon Mahood, also a wild bird specialist, has pointed out that by allowing hunting for deer, wild boars and civets, Vietnam legalizes the entrapping in large forest areas, because it may happen that the traps would accidentally catch sao la or some rare animals existing in the wild.
Animals in national parks would also be put on “chopping board?”
The circular No. 47 clearly stipulates that the animals in national parks must not be exploited for commercial purposes. However, Dao Quy Phien, Director of the Vu Quang National Park in Ha Tinh province said the circular would make it very difficult to protect the biodiversity of the national park.
He said that the people to be allowed to go to the forest would catch any animals they can. As such, the animals in the red books may also be caught by the people.
“My viewpoint is that in order to protect the biodiversity, it would be better not to apply the regulations right now,” Phien said.
Tran Xuan Cuong, Deputy Director of the Pu Mat National Park, has also expressed his worry that the animals in the national park would be killed by the people with low intellectual standards and lack of legal knowledge.
“The specialized-use forests are all surrounded by mountainous areas, where ethnic minority people live. If the circular is applied, they would be allowed to go to forests to hunt for animals, they would take full advantage of the regulation to hunt for other precious and rare animals as well,” he said.