VietNamNet Bridge - Hundreds of hectares of forest around Gia Nghia Town in Dak Nong province have been devastated just within several months of 2015, while the forest has been illegally occupied and traded.

 

Local people said they feared that deforestation would kick off a campaign of turning thousands of hectares of watershed into agricultural land for trading for profit. 

Gia Nghiais described as a “second Da Lat” in Vietnam, a tourism city with wonderful landscapes, thanks to its ideal height, forests and natural waterfalls.

When reporters arrived in Dac Ha Commune oin Dac G’long District, they could see trees chopped down days ago in Wards No 1685 and 1697 put under the management of Gia Nghia Forestry Company Ltd.

This is a commune of Dac G’long District, but the area is 15 kilometers from the province’s central area. There were many tree trunks lying in disorder on the ground as wll as many logs of wood, 3-4 meters long, which illegal loggers can carry away.

More ravaged trees were seen when the reporters went further into the forest. They could hear the brittle sound from motor saws and black smoke rising from the ground under the scorching sun. 

An official of the Dac G’long forest rangers’ unit told the reporters that they were present at a serious forest case in early April. About 23.7 hectares of forest were damaged.

However, neither Dac Ha Enterprise nor Gia Nghia Company, in charge of the taking care for the forest, reported the deforestation case. The district’s forest rangers and the environment policemen, who discovered the case in an action plan to fight against illegal logging, reported it.

The rangers and policemen discovered that Hoang Van Dao, a local man, and some others, tried to fell trees to occupy land.

The serious problem was that the forest wards are just over one kilometer from Dac Ha Enterprise’s head office, but the forest owner did not know about deforestation.

In fact, many other cases occurred in the same wards with 49.5 ha damaged in April 2015 alone.

The forest was even more seriously damaged in Quang Thanh Commune, because the area is nearer to the province’s central area. Houses and cottages have been built temporarily on the land where trees have been chopped down. 

At least 110 hectares of natural forests put under Nghia Tin’s management have been ravaged so far this year. 

Dozens of temporary houses have been set up in Cau Go area of Quang Thanh Commune, just six kilometers from the Dac Nong provincial police station.

Lao Dong