A new report from Yale University's Environment 360 cites illegal logging and rapid economic and population growth for the destruction of forests in Vietnam and surrounding countries, leveling richly biodiverse areas where "1,700 species have been discovered in the last 15 years alone."
The piece, written by Daniel Drollette, chronicles the state of Vietnam's forests since the Agent Orange defoliation missions of the Vietnam War. While the battlefields have disappeared, the forests are still being cut down for furniture and replaced with coffee plantations.
In just 10 years, the report says, Vietnam has become the number two coffee producer in the world. As those plantations replace more and more forests, Vietnamese loggers have begun sourcing about 80 percent of the country's timber illegally in Laos and Cambodia.
Drollette cited a recent WWF study that found Indochina's areas of undisturbed forest-defined as at least 3.2 square kilometers of pristine woodlands-plunged from more than 70 percent to 20 percent since the end of the Vietnam War. At this rate, the WWF concluded, by 2030 "only 14 percent of the greater Mekong's remaining forests will consist of contiguous habitat capable of sustaining viable populations of many wildlife species."
Some of these species, which have only been discovered by scientists in recent years, include the Javan rhino, barking deer, fishing cat, ferret-badger, finless porpoise, Irrawaddy dolphin, giant Mekong catfish and the saola, a goat-like creature also known as the Asian unicorn. Biologists are concerned that the habitat will disappear before other unique species can be identified and studied.
In the end, Drollette concludes that that the solution is not going to come from federal mandates, but rather from local community involvement. The Van Long nature reserve, he writes, was created as a result of local initiatives. Villagers living next to Van Long take a sense of pride in the reserve and have an economic stake in an ecotourism resort being built there.
