VietNamNet Bridge – The protective forests throughout the country are bleeding. There are many reasons that induce businesses and people devastate the forests.

The Hoai Nhon protective forest’s management board has reported that the forest has been seriously damaged, and the program on planting 5 million hectares of forests in Hoai Nhon district is now in the danger, according to Nong nghiep Vietnam newspaper.

The management board now controls 7,800 hectares of the protective forests in 15 communes and towns, most of which are the acacia trees planted in 1994 and 1995.

The trees, which have grown up for the last 20 years with the trunk diameter of 30-40 cm, have become the “aiming points” of illegal lumberjacks who try to chop down the trees to sell timber to wood processing workshops.

In Quang Binh province, the Long Dai protective forests have also been seriously damaged just because of the big amount of valuable ironwood in the forests which are too attractive to illegal lumberjacks.

A report showed that some 100 hectares of the forests have been harmed, including the 20 hectares put under the very strict control. The trees in the forests needed hundreds of years to get so old and precious, while the lumberjacks just need several days to fell them.

Ho Nam, the head of the Da Chat hamlet, warned that if the deforestation cannot be stopped, the lowland would suffer big floods in the rainy season and drought in summer.

Meanwhile, in Ha Tinh province, protective forests have been chopped legally as per the decision of the provincial authorities on allocating the 20,000 square meters of the Hong Linh protective forests to Ngoc Hai Company for the stone exploitation project.

It is quite a surprise that Ha Tinh, a locality which is usually stricken by typhoons and strong winds, decided to exploit stone to get money instead of protecting villages, people’s assets from natural calamities.

There are many reasons that induce businesses and people devastate the forests. In Quang Nam province, people destroy protective forests just because they need some land area for shrimp ponds.

Chinese businessmen have flocked to Quang Nam to collect shrimp at high prices. This has prompted local farmers to borrow money from banks and chop down crops to develop shrimp ponds.

Those, who don’t have cultivation land, took a venturesome action of destroying the coastal protective forests to get land area for shrimp ponds despite the warnings by the local authorities.

Meanwhile, the Thach Nham protective forests in Quang Ngai province would be destroyed because the investors have decided that they need to develop a hydropower plant there.

According to Doan Ngoc Thach, Head of the Thach Nham Forest Management Board, Thach Nham has the reserves of 120 cubic meters of wood per hectare. This means that if a hydropower plant is set up there, 5,600 cubic meters of precious wood would disappear.

Thach said on Tuoi tre that the hydropower plant, as reported by the investors, would “swallow” 47 hectares of the forests. Besides, it would make the 63 households living on the forestry-relating jobs, become jobless. Especially, the Xa Lo River may turn into a dead river because the hydropower plant would block the current stream.

Thanh Mai