Forests liberally sacrificed for timber, farmland

The remains of a nghien tree in Hao Nghia Commune forest in Bac Kan Province. Deep inside the Hao Nghia forest, the sounds of nature are absent.

No bird chirps, no insect buzzes, not even the sound of wind rustling the leaves can be heard. The sounds of the forest are completely drowned in the roaring and buzzing of electric saws that are felling huge nghien trees that flourish in more than 400 hectares of limestone forest in Na Ri District’s Hao Nghia Commune in the northern province of Bac Kan. The forest is considered the province’s treasure because of the nghien trees, whose timber is hard, heavy and fairly worm-resistant. It is suitable for making tools, vehicles, ships and furniture. Scientifically known as Burretiodendron hsienmu, this species is also found in China, where it is called xianmu. In China, over-felling of both young and large xianmu trees have pushed it to the edge of extinction. Guided by a Nung ethnic minority resident, Thanh Nien found four fresh stumps in an area less than 0.05 hectares, each measuring more than a meter in diameter. The guide, Lam Truong Ngang, estimates that the biggest tree, would have weighed more than 30 cubic meters before felling. At least 100 nghien trees in the forest have been chopped down in the past two months, says Nung, who has lived in the area for about 40 years. Nguyen Ba Ngai, acting director of the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, admits “the forest of Hao Nghia Commune is being devastated. “The price of nghien timber chopping-blocks sold to China has surged almost double over the past two weeks.” A block 20 centimeters thick and around 50 centimeters in diameter can sell for VND200,000 (US$11) inside the forest and VND350,000 ($20) when brought to the main street. “It’s hard to protect the forest then,” Ngai says ruefully. Locals say illegal logging in the forest became rampant last November after the department allotted the Agriculture and Forestry Development Investment Company 56 hectares to gather burnt, spoilt and dry wood left behind by the loggers. More locals have become loggers since then, fearful of losing the timber pie to the company under Vietnam Timber and Forest Products Association. Quite a few people have lost their protective spirit, saying authorities have made it easy for the company to destroy the forest. Ngai rejects this. “Our supervisors can guarantee that the company doesn’t abuse the permit,” he says. Last February, Na Ri District administration appointed a team of six officials of the Hao Nghia Commune to take turns to oversee 100 workers and 20 electric saws deployed by the company at all times. The supervisors were supposed to work independently, but they have received VND4.5 million ($254) a month from the company from November to February. Head of the team, Hoang Khai Chien, who is also chairman of the commune’s People’s Committee, says he did this work only on the weekends. He adds that the team only signed written receipts for being paid as a “kind of salary for supervision.” No labor contract exists between the parties, yet Ngai says: “There’s no mystery here. “The supervisors cannot work for no payment, and they’re not allowed to get paid from the state budget.” The team has given the company a clean chit while the provincial Forest Management agency recently found more than four cubic meters of nghien timber in the company area and more than 38 cubic meters just outside, all newly felled. Farmland invasion In the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak, many hectares of forests have been, and are being cleared for use as farmland for growing cash crops like coffee, cashews and pepper. The impacts of forest loss have been obvious - severe droughts, floods and the loss of groundwater. Droughts every year for the past 12 years have caused losses of more than VND8 trillion ($451.6 million) for local farmers, while floods in the same period have killed 127 people, damaged houses, orchards and fields worth some VND1.4 trillion ($79 million), according to the provincial agency responsible for disaster mitigation and flood and storm prevention. Yet the flow of immigrants is unchecked, and they continue to replace forests with farmland. Nguyen Dai Nguong, director of the provincial weather bureau, says immigrants first destroy the forests for farmland, which are in turn damaged by droughts and floods caused by deforestation. The rapid loss of forests over the past 10 years has loosened the soil and caused rainwater to flow straight into the rivers and lakes instead of recharging the groundwater, he says. This also robs the area of its topsoil, which can have disastrous implications for agriculture in the long run. Le Cuoc of the provincial Forest Management agency says the coverage of forests in Dak Lak has dropped to 45.8 percent from 70 percent 20 years ago. Districts that grow a lot of coffee are also the ones that have small coverage of forests, Cuoc says. Coffee has taken over more than 170,000 hectares of forestland. The province’s capital city Buon Ma Thuot used to be surrounded with thousands of hectares of forests. “Wild animals wandered into the city sometimes,” he says. But now, the city only has 551 hectares left, covering 1.5 percent of the area. Of these, less than a tenth is natural forest. Reported by Vu An – Tran Ngoc Quyen