A New Lung and Kidney
The quiet mangrove forests of Can Gio are situated only 35km away from the centre of Vietnam's largest - and noisiest - metropolis: Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), formerly known as Saigon, a large urban sprawl that stretches out for tens of miles in all directions. Cycling out of town seems to be almost impossible. The busy route along the Saigon river is supposed to lead to the ocean, but first it leads me to a neverending continuum of streets, buildings, hectic moto drivers, small-scale factories, markets, buses and trucks - until it abruptly stops. The river fans out and forms a delta of flat islands separated by streams and natural channels. This is Can Gio, the poorest district of HCMC, and yet home to immense wealth.
"Our economic assessments estimate the value generated by the mangrove forests in the range of US$ 200.000.000 per year", Le Duc Tuan, Director of the Mangrove Research Center, proudly recalls. "This includes bequest values, existence values, values of forest products, genetic diversity, and - most importantly - ecological services". Can Gio's mangrove root systems stabilize the soil and serve as spawning grounds for fish, while their leaves filter pollutants out of HCMC's air and provide fresh oxygen. Partially flooded during the high tides, the forest also considerably improves the water quality of the Saigon river before it enters the sea. Can Gio is an environmental buffer between the city and the ocean, or, as Le Duc Tuan puts it, "Ho Chi Minh City's lung and kidney".
Before its ecological importance was first recognized, however, the 200 million dollar forest had suffered unprecedented losses. Serving as a base for communist forces during the US-Vietnamese war, its protective canopy cover and impassable forest tracks in the proximity of Saigon were considered too high a risk by US strategists. Furthermore, the waterway connection from Saigon to the sea had to be secured. The US army therefore embarked on what became one of the most extensive and meaningless ecological destruction campaigns: Thousands of tons of defoliants and herbicides, mainly the infamous, dioxin-based "Agent Orange", were sprayed over the whole area. As the last Americans were evacuated from Saigon by helicopters in 1975, the forests of Can Gio didn't exist anymore. Their destruction was complete.
External estimates stated that the restoration of Can Gio's forests would take a century. However, in one of the world's most impressive restoration efforts, the Vietnamese demonstrated they only needed a quarter of that. After 22 years, 38.000 hectares had been replanted. Today, only the uniformity of the young trees and the evenness of the canopy cover indicates that this forest has not developed naturally. "But the forest structure is evolving", explains Le Duc Tuan. "The monitoring of these changes is one of our main research activites. And we are observing an increase in biodiversity and food web density. Even monkey populations driven to the South are making a comeback."
Representatives from the regional UNESCO office in Jakarta visited Can Gio and were surprised by the success of the reforestation efforts. Since Can Gio fulfilled the formal criteria for a biosphere reserve, it joined the world network in 2000 - as the first planted forest ever to be recognized. As a result, visitor numbers increased drastically, from 20.000 to 300.000 per year, 99% of which were Vietnamese, most of them from HCMC. "People wondered why Can Gio was a biosphere reserve, and wanted to know what was so special about it, so they kept coming." The area was declared one of Vietnam's 20 most important ecotourism areas, and a public tourist company now manages a part of Can Gio imaginatively called the "Monkey Island", were saltwater crocodiles and other large animals are bred in captivity.
Maintaining and developing the forests is not a cheap and easy task, however. The forest management board boasts 100 employees and 40 rangers. Further 150 "protector households", distributed around the forested area, receive a small fee in exchange for looking after their parcels. Local environmental education and international research cooperation are carried out. Le Duc Tuan, who works for the forest since 1978 and speaks the best English amongst the employees, visits conferences, workshops and meetings in order to make the reserve fit for the future. And what about the past? "Until now, no research has been done on dioxin in our soils..."
06.06.2006 09:14h
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Basic Informationabout Can Gio Mangrove (UNESCO site)
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