The central province of Thua Thien-Hue has issued an emergency action plan to conserve primates by 2025, with a vision to 2030, focusing on local national parks, reserves and natural forests.

Red-shanked douc, a rare primate species 

It looks to promote relevant agencies’ law enforcement and sense of responsibility to protect primate species and their habitat and minimise the poaching, trading and consumption of primate products. The province also hopes to improve local conservationists’ capacity, especially species identification, rescue and monitoring skills.

To that end, Thua Thien-Hue is set to step up conservation education programmes to raise public awareness and better law enforcement efficiency and sense of responsibility of agencies and communities.

Forest management units will include primate conservation activities into their plans. While research activities will be increased, science and technology will be further applied in surveying and monitoring activities to support the conservation.

The province will also enhance cooperation with domestic and foreign partners in this work, according to the emergency action plan.

Bach Ma National Park in Thua Thien-Hue has recorded nine primate species, accounting for 36 percent of total primate species in Vietnam and 60 percent of those in the central area of Truong Son Range. All of them are classified as rare.

Meanwhile, Phong Dien Nature Reserve harbours eight primate species, three of which are indigenous to Vietnam, namely red-shanked douc (Pygathrix nemaeus), pygmy slow loris (Nycticebus pygmaeus) and northern white-cheeked gibbon (Nomascus leucogenys).

Nearly $300,000 for wildlife preservation in central Truong Son Range

The central province of Thua Thien-Hue has recently launched a project to preserve wildlife in the central area of Truong Son Mountain Range using non-refundable aid from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Vietnam. 

The provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development was assigned to carry out the project in the buffer zones of Bach Ma National Park and Saola Nature Reserve in Nam Dong and A Luoi districts between now and 2022. 

Costing over 6.8 billion VND (299,000 USD), the project aims to enhance the capacity of social organisations and local communities in building policies and giving feedback on natural resources management and biodiversity via training courses. It will also help improve livelihoods of residents living on forests, thereby easing pressure on natural resources. 

Over the past years, the province has actively preserved biodiversity in central Truong Son Mountain Range, including surveying wildlife in nature reserves to prevent deforestation and forest degradation in the border areas between southern Laos and central Vietnam, especially in Bach Ma National Park and Saola Nature Reserve. 

The survey results have mitigated threat to saola and other endangered species, thus keeping landscapes of central Truong Son Mountain intact. At the same time, technical solutions to supervision and management of biodiversity preservation have been enhanced and local livelihoods have improved. 

The province is collecting studies to propose new measures to preserve wildlife and use techniques that do not impact landscapes for research.-VNA