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Bolivia
China
Ecuador
Madagascar
Nicaragua
Peru
Tanzania
United States
Vietnam
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Vietnam is one of the world’s top ten global conifer conservation hotspots.
Bi Doup-Nui Ba Nature Reserve (above) and adjacent areas in
Vietnam’s Central
Highlands have the country’s largest contiguous
area of coniferous montane forests.
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Vietnam is ranked as the 16th most important country for biodiversity and is widely
recognized to have a globally significant proportion of rare and endemic species.
An estimated 12,000 to 15,000 plant species, representing 3.2 percent of the world’s
botanical diversity, occur in Vietnam, and nearly 20 percent of known plants are
endemic. The country now supports ca. 10 to 12 percent cover of closed tropical
forest; less than one percent is in a pristine state — restricted mainly to isolated
mountain regions that are poorly studied but undoubtedly high in biodiversity and
endemism. Many of Vietnam’s native plants and animals are endangered by one
of the world’s fastest rates of deforestation and associated population growth.
These stresses, together with the country’s rapid opening of an international market
economy, bring particular urgency to the need for up-to-date biological information,
training, and conservation to protect Vietnam’s unique biodiversity.
Nepenthes thorelii,
Lo Go – Xa Mat National Park |
Duperrea pavettifolia,
Ke Bang limestone massif |
In Vietnam, the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG) has collaborated for more than fifteen
years in a Vietnam Botanical Conservation Program of research, training, and conservation activities, initially
Utricularia delphinioides,
Lo Go – Xa Mat National Park |
with the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources in Hanoi and
subsequently with four additional partner institutions — the National Institute
of Medicinal Materials (formerly, the Institute of Materia Medica); the Department
of Botany, Vietnam National University; the Forest Inventory and Planning Institute;
and the Forest Protection Department. Since 1999, MBG has maintained a permanent
office in Hanoi, with an in-country resident botanist who leads the program. By
strengthening collaboration among the partner institutions, as well as collaboration
between them and international conservation organizations, MBG’s program has helped
to establish a new, integrated approach to conservation of Vietnam’s rich biotic
diversity, incorporating natural resource management in understanding of plants,
which are critical to preservation of ecosystems and survival of other endangered
organisms. The program has created strong links between research on the flora of
Vietnam, its practical utility, and ongoing conservation planning and management.
Within this context, the program, which focused initially on northern and central
Vietnam, has extended its activities to southern Vietnam and to transboundary
areas bordering Cambodia and Laos that together form an ecoregion of global
biodiversity significance.
The objectives of the program are:
To conduct
inventories of plants in threatened regions of high biotic importance and to
disseminate the results
To build
long-term institutional and intellectual capacity in Vietnam for science and
conservation through a multi-tiered training program for university students,
park rangers, forest protection officers, and technical staff of botanical
institutions
Collaboratively
with other conservation organizations, to engage a network of botanists and
conservation biologists in assessing the status and distribution of globally
threatened plant species in Vietnam and other countries in Indochina and in
using the resulting knowledge to develop action plans for species of critical
conservation concern
To improve
biodiversity conservation and protected area systems management in Indochina
by continuing to extend exploration, capacity building, and community-based
natural resource management to protected areas spanning Vietnam’s boundary with
Laos in the north and Cambodia in the south
To reduce
pressures on wild plant populations by continuing community-based conservation
activities and awareness programs in Vietnam, engaging and training residents
of communities adjoining protected areas in both in situ and ex situ
conservation, and assisting communities in developing ecologically sustainable
economic activities that strengthen the incentive to conserve wild plants in
their habitats
For more information, contact
Jack Regalado
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