Kim Hy Proposed Nature Reserve - Frontier-publications.co.uk

Introduction to Bac Kan province
Bac Kan province is bounded by the co-ordinates 21º48’-22º 44’N and 105º26’-106º15’E
and has a total land area of 4,857km² (Bac Kan General Department of Statistics, 2001).
It was determined as a distinct ecological/socio-economic unit in the administrative
restructuring of the country in 1997, when Programme 364 split Bac Thai province into
Bac Kan and Thai Nguyen. Six communes from Bach Thong district to the west were
merged with ten communes from Phu Luong district to the north to form Cho Don
district, a transition area between the ‘midland’ agro-ecological zone represented by Thai
Nguyen and the ‘northern mountains’ zone of Bac Kan (Castella et al, 1-18, 2002). The
new province is now composed of six rural districts (Ba Be, Ngan Son, Na Ri, Bach
Thong, Cho Don and Cho Moi) plus one urban district of Bac Kan, which contains the
provincial administrative centre.
Over 30% of the communes in Bac Kan are classed as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’, with 21% of
households earning less than 5USD per month. Recent agricultural development and
doubled public investments saw provincial GDP rise by nearly 60% between 1996 and
2000. Rural poverty correspondingly decreased (Castella et al, 121-146, 2002). Bac Kan
experiences the usual constraints to socio-economic development as many other northern
mountainous provinces: biophysical (sloping terrain, acidic soils, unpredictable climate),
environmental (deforestation, erosion, flooding), infrastructural (poor access,
communications and power), economic (subsistence, lack of capital and markets),
cultural (ethnic conflict, languages, lack of education) and intellectual (comparative lack
of access to information/training leading to inflexibility). Out of the 61 provinces listed in
the UNDP National Human Development Report 2001, Bac Kan is ranked at 54 and
included in the Low Human Development bracket.
The climate of Bac Kan province is typical for northern Vietnam, following a monsoon
pattern of a distinct wet season between April and September with most precipitation in
July (on average 263mm, or 82% of the annual figure), and a dry season between October
and March, when the mean precipitation range per month is 13.0-70.5mm. In the summer
months temperatures range from 22.9-27.3ºC, whilst in winter the average temperature is
18ºC, sometimes dropping to 2.2ºC. Several rivers source in Bac Kan with major
ecological and economic roles downstream (Castella et al 1-18, 2002; FIPI, 1997)).
The natural vegetation of Bac Kan has undergone decline in parallel with the rest of the
northern areas of the country. The principal causes of forest loss have been due to shifting
cultivation and over-exploitation of natural forest products, as well as agricultural
expansion (Nguyen Van San & Gilmour, 1999). The heterogenous land cover mosaic of
Bac Kan province includes areas of lowland rice agriculture interspersed with bare land,
regenerative scrub and degraded forest, but it is only on the areas of limestone tower karst
that continuous stretches of relatively intact forest on limestone exist without strong
anthropogenic influences upon the landscape.
Frontier Vietnam Forest Research Programme Technical Report No.24. 13