Dong Nai People's Committee yesterday disapproved the construction of a road that would cut through Cat Tien National Park, at a meeting with concerned departments and park officials.

A part of the Cat Tien National Park. The project of building a road cutting through the park has been protested.

The project, which was approved by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), will destroy nearly 11ha of the park's forest while acquiring land for the 18km-long and 6m-wide road, which will span the Dong Nai River in Tan Phu District.

The road was scheduled to be constructed from October last year to 2017.

The Dong Nai People's Committee sent a letter to MARD, protesting against the plan, as it was worried that the project would affect the park's diverse flora and fauna that are strictly protected in the park,

The committee said the road would run through a forest section that was strictly protected, and said it would agree to a road that was less than 1.5m in width.

There is no urgency about the project's target because the road is designed to run parallel to the Dong Nai River, which will allow monitoring of the park's safety via the waterway.

The road would destroy nearly 11ha of the forest, badly affecting its ecology by separating the forest from the Dong Nai River, and changing the natural habitat of wild animals, the committee said.

MARD on December 25 last year asked the park to temporarily halt the project.

Several representatives at the meeting said as the road was being built in an area that had been chosen as a famous national landscape by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, thus it should have the PM's approval.

Vo Van Chanh, deputy chairman of the Dong Nai People's Committee, said the project needed to do more research.

Chanh said the whole project needed to be evaluated to arrive at the best decision.

Cat Tien National Park is located at the core of the wildlife reserve and biosphere forest in Dong Nai Province, which proposes to ask the UNESCO to recognise the area as a natural heritage garden of the world.

VNS