Hanoi (VNA) – While unprecedented environmental challenges threatening the health and lives of millions of people around the world🔥 are ringing alarm bells for human behaviour towards the nature, Vietnam is home to a primeval forest described as a “bi🌟g school” that has helped spread the love for nature for the past nearly six decades.
Nostalgia for Cuc Phuong
Filled with the nostalgia for the first national park in Vietnam, musician Tran Chung wrote a famous song titled “Nho ve Cuc Phuong” (Missing Cuc Phuong). To many, the park spanning the provinces of Ninh Binh, Hoa Binh, and Thanh Hoa is more than nostalgia but a yearning for the place full of secrets awaiting visitors to explore. “To me, it was a fairytale land and an extremely meaningful reward that my school presented to good students like me. Returning after more than 30 years, the biggest surprise to me is that Cuc Phuong remains almost intact. I’m really touched by the forest protection efforts as well as the way eco-tourism is organised here,” said renowned broadcaster Bach Duong, who has volunteered to become an “ambassador” of Cuc Phuong for the past year.
“Cradle” of conservationists
Over 50 years ago, tens of young graduates from overseas courses eagerly took on their tasks at Cuc Phuong. It was also the time this forest, becoming the first national park in Vietnam not long before that, made Soviet Union experts thunderstruck. With their youth and enthusiasm, they weathered every difficulty and hardship, even bombardments by US forces, to conduct basic and comprehensive studies serving as the foundation for evaluating the local biodiversity. In particular, those trying times helped nurture a contingent of well-known scientists such as Nguyen Tien Ban, Tran Dinh Ly, Tran Ngoc Ninh, and Trinh Dinh Thanh.“Big school” in the forest
Managers of Cuc Phuong are striving to turn it into a model national park. Deputy Director of the park Do Van Lap said to have a model national park, the first and foremost is to have model people. Given this, apart from forest protection and scientific research, environmental education is a core step to turn Cuc Phuong into a “big school” of nature education. On the basis of this idea, a club for conservation education was set up at the national park. Supported by Fauna & Flora International (FFI) and Education for Nature - Vietnam (ENV), forest rangers have visited thousands of children in villages across the 15 communes located in the park’s buffer zone over the last 20 years to instill the love for nature into the young. Many of these children, in turn, have become forest rangers or teachers helping to improve the local community’s awareness.
VNA