Home | Sitemap | Login

   

Peatland News

Title: U Minh Thuong Forests See Good Regenaration
Date: 23-Nov-2005
Category: Vietnam-Kien Giang
Source/Author: Vietnam News Agency
Description: The U Minh Thuong forests have been strongly regenerating after a major fire during the 2002 dry season.

About 70 percent of the total of 3,211 devastated cajeput forest have been regreen) the Managing Board of the U Minh Thuong National Park reports. In areas where regeneration is impossible, seeds were sown or cajeput seedlings planted. Before 1985, the U Minh Thuong forest had been ruined once by fires, but recovered naturally. This fact has made scientists affirm that with tropical rainfall, ecological system regeneration can be seen with as many as 80 percent of the burned forests can be green again on their own in ten years. To prevent forest fires, the U Minh Thuong managers for the first time pumped water to the forests at the beginning of the dry season to increase huminity. Due attention is also paid to increase the people's awareness of preventing fire for the forests. U Minh Thuong, a national park of Viet Nam, is widely known for its biodiversity. Apart from 8,038 ha lying in a peat land region of the Mekong river delta, the park covered 12,000 ha of buffer zone, which were put under cajeput, sugarcane and crops. The buffer zone is home to about 3,200 households. Thanks to socio-economic development projects in the buffer zone since 1999, the local people's living condition have been improved. Viet Nam's forest acreage increased to nearly 12 million ha in 2002 and its forest coverage rose to nearly 38 percent.--Enditem



[ Back ] [ Print Friendly ]