Local people encouraged to preserve national park

A ceremony was held in the resort city of Da Lat on January 15, 2008 to launch a project that looks to get local people involved in the conservation work in the Bidoup-Nui Ba National Park in Lam Dong Province.A representative from the World Wide Fund-Viet Nam programme, a partner to the project, said the project will improve the local people’s awareness and responsibility to the conservation work, thus reducing the pressure on the protection of wild animals and forests in the park. The project, with a funding of 179,000 GBP (approximately 5 billion VND) channeled through the WWF for Nature from the Charles Darwin Foundation, will be carried out until 2010. According to the WWF, the Bidoup-Nui Ba National Park has been given the top priority for preservation in Viet Nam. However, its endemic bio-diversity has been threatened by local people’s hunting practices and illegal deforestation for rubber planting. Established in 2004, the Bidoup-Nui Ba National Park, covering 72,573 ha in Lac Duong district, is home to many rare species of flora and fauna and the oldest primordial forest in the Central Highlands.The Bidoup-Nui Ba National Park possesses 10 out of the 11 endangered species of pines. Along the slope of Lang Bian range, the khasia pines, according to biologists, are a distinct species of the park as they only grow between 1,000 to 2,000m above sea level. On Bidoup, across the valley from Nui Ba, the forest contains merkus pines, a variety unique to the Asian mainland and one of the rarest species of pine in the world. The trees’ trunks can measure 4m in diameter, and the trunks can reach up to 20m in length before branching out. On the branches of these rare pines, visitors can spot over 200 species of birds. Many of these species are endangered species, including the grey-crowned crocias (crocias langbianis), the black-hooded laughingthrush (garrulax pectoralis) and the collared laughingthrush (garrulax yersini).The park also possesses the largest orchid gene pool in the country, with 250 different species. Orchids that originated here take the mountains in their scientific names, such as dendrobium langbianense, oberonia langbianensis, elaeocarpus bidupensis and vanda bidupensis.