VietNamNet Bridge – The yew cemetery in Ea H’leo in Dak Lak province is the only cemetery in the world where yew plants, which appeared in the prehistoric period, are buried.

As yew plants are believed to appear in the prehistoric period, the pieces of dead yew wood are now invaluable. They have been hunted by antique item collectors who are willing to pay millions of dong for one kilo of the deadwood.

Dak Lak is believed to be the only place where yew deadwood pieces still can be found. This has prompted local people to flock to the yew cemetery to dig the earth to look for yew deadwood, the price of which has been escalating day after day.

Ea Ral, where the only existing yew population with 270 plants and a yew cemetery was buried decades ago under the Ea Ral reservoir, has become the area where people are looking for yew wood.

According to Nguyen Van Thuyet, a local resident, 40 years ago, Ea H’leo’s people thought these were pine trees, which, unlike the others, lived in water.

“There were so many yew plants at that time,” Thuyet said. “Yew plants were then chopped down to make room for people to develop coffee fields. The yew wood was just used as firewood to cook”.

Only when the plants began dwindling away and the leftover plants were put under the strict control by forest rangers, did people realize that this is a kind of rare and precious wood.

It is estimated that only approximately 300 yew plants still exist in all the Central Highlands.

The yew cemetery was once the Ea Ral 60 hectare reservoir in the past. In the 1970s and 1980s, the district’s authorities decided to turn Ea Ral into the reservoir providing water to irrigate coffee gardens in the dry season. Thus, thousands of yew plants in a vast area were chopped down.

The cut trees were then all thrown into the reservoir. Only 270 yew plants luckily escaped the felling because they were located on the highest promontory of the swampy area.

At that time, no one could imagine that the trees thrown away would be named in the Red Book and hunted by people.

The living yew plants and the yew wood cemetery are now under the strict control. The forest rangers’ unit has set up a check-point at the Ea Ral reservoir area to protect the living and the dead yew trees.

A barbed wire fence has been installed around the 270 living trees to be sure that no illegal logger can access them. Even if they can go through the check-point and cross the swampy area, they will not be able to overcome the barbed wire.

Scientists say yew plants live in swampy areas. They have blooms and fruits, but fruits do not bear seeds. Therefore, they are called the “barren variety”. Nature determines the yew’s multiplication, and humans cannot intervene in the process.

No one can say for sure how many yew deadwood pieces are buried in Ea Ral area, but local people believe that this is the biggest yew cemetery in the world.

Thai Binh