The Ice Age Saola’s Battle for Survival

 

Tug of War on the Ho Chi Minh Trail

 

by Elizabeth Kemf, Consultant to WWF's Greater Mekong Programme

A tug of war between conservationists and developers has intensified on the Ho Chi Minh Trail – the infamous network of secret transport routes that formed a north-south supply line during the US/Vietnam War. Vietnamese conservationists, protected area managers and a number of NGOs tried to but the brakes on the Ho Chi Minh Highway as asphalt began replacing the hidden routes that bisect protected areas and endangered forest habitat in the Annamite mountains, its foothills, and the country’s Central Highlands.

The highway, which has provoked road rage among Vietnamese and international conservationists since its planning stage, slices through ten national parks including the country’s first, Cuc Phuong, and Phong Nha-Ke Bang, declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2003.

Conservationists contend that huge swathes of concrete sever some of the region’s critically important protected areas, like Cuc Phuong National Park, which was inaugurated by President Ho Chi Minh in1962. The highway, which runs for lengthy stretches, mainly in Vietnam, pierces the heart of the mysterious Annamite Mountain range, which straddles the once war-torn Vietnam/Lao border, most of which was until recently only approachable on foot or on elephant.

Planting rice in the foothills of the Annamite Mountains in Laos. WWF/E.Kemf

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“Ho Chi Minh would not like a road bisecting a national park which he approved as president,” states Prof Vo Quy, the pioneer of Vietnam’s conservation movement: “The road in Cuc Phuong was not part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and we conservationists wanted it to be outside of the park. Sensitive animals like the Delacour's Langur (Trachypithecus delacouri) found in Cuc Phuong, or animals such as the saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis), found further south, will never cross big roads, so small populations of animals are cut off from each other”.

To learn more about the mystery of the Critically Endangered Ice Age species and its unique wet evergreen forest habitat that straddles the remote wet evergreen forests on the border of Vietnam and Laos, read the full report: The Saola's Battle for Survival on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, published on 30 August 2013 by WWF-World Wide Fund for Nature. The groundbreaking report is written by Elizabeth Kemf and illustrated with her photographs as well as those contributed by the Saola Working Group of IUCN's Species Survival Commission and the Wildlife Conservation Society in Laos and team members from WWF's Greater Mekong Programme.