Ba Ria – Vung Tau (VNS/VNA) - Keeping the Con Dao National Park cleanand conserving biodiversity is the top priority for its management board.

The area in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau, has suffered pollutionfrom aqua-exploitation activities that saw waste released into the seathreatening biodiversity.

The rapid development of tourism on the island in recent years has also seen anincrease in waste.

Deputy director of the national park Tran Dinh Hue said in the past six monthsthe park’s forest management division had conversed with thousands of residentsand tourists to raise public awareness of environmental issues.

Hue said his staff had monitored seawater every two weeks over the past sixmonths measuring temperatures, pH levels as well as collecting 854 cubic metresof garbage.

The management board plans to work with relevant agencies to raise publicawareness and strictly deal with violations.

Climate change and human activities are putting coral reefs under greatpressure, leading to a decline in coverage and coral bleaching.

Therefore, the management of the park had co-operated with Nha Trang Instituteof Oceanography to recover and develop the coral population over an area of 40hectares since 2018.

The project runs from 2018 to 2020 with an estimated budget of 1.4 billion VND (60,000USD) in three areas of Con Dao where coral reefs have been slow to recover: DatDoc, Hon Tai and Bai Canh. It aims to transplant 2,500 branches of coral over atotal area of 3ha.

The first phase of the project focuses on offering training to the localcommunity to improve their awareness of marine protection and coral recoverytechniques; recovering 1ha of coral with more than 1,500 coral branchestransplanted. In the second phase, another 2ha of corals will be recovered.

Deputy head of the park’s forest management division Nguyen Van Tra saidillegal hunting, killing and selling meat and turtle eggs was still a problem.

In an attempt to fix the situation, the park deployed a project to save turtleeggs and baby turtles to recover the turtle population.

The project aims to strengthen protection of mother turtles, hatchlings andeggs on spawning grounds, minimising the disadvantages of natural and humaninfluences, their reproductive capacity in conservation stations and somemonitoring sites, and studying the ecological characteristics to betterpreserve them.

As a result, 257 turtles were chipped when they came to nesting sites to givebirth for the first time, a total of 107,102 turtle eggs saw 81,137 babyturtles were released into the sea last year.

Previously, it has collaborated with the International Union for Conservationof Nature in Vietnam to organise a volunteer programme in marine turtleconservation since 2014.

By 2018, there were 180 volunteers together with the forest ranger force tomonitor and safely remove 128,629 eggs and release 62,217 baby turtles into thesea.

Con Dao National Park covers a total area of 19,998 ha (including 16 islandsand islets) comprising of forest and forestland of 5,998 ha, biodiversitymarine protected area of 14,000 ha. The management also covers 20,500 ha ofmarine buffer area. — VNS/VNA