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

most accessible areas of forest with suitable trees being targeted as priority, and then
transported internally if need be. Most large cuts are of Excentiodendron tonkinensis, a
hardwood used in the manufacture of chopping boards (a fairly lucrative and constant
local market) and construction of houses; one group of local people were felling and
processing timber for housing near the second Frontier base camp at An Tinh during the
second expedition, for the construction of a house in the northern area of the commune.
There is very little, if any large scale timber felling which is not undertaken with the
explicit permission of the commune Peoples’ Committees, however, and local protection
staff related a fairly positive view of the responsibility of local people in this matter (Kim
Hy and Con Minh FPD, pers. Comm.). Although E. tonkinensis is listed as regionally
‘endangered’ by the IUCN (2002) and nationally ‘vulnerable’ in the RDBV (1996), both
mature stands and juvenile stems of this species are locally abundant within the forest
where selective logging on the karst hillsides is not extensive, and it is more the effect
upon the forest’s structural dynamics which is deleterious from this activity than the
direct threat to the species’ local survival. Other species, however, which are also
traditionally used in construction, have suffered more dramatically in the past in this area,
notably Chukrasia tabularis, (‘data deficient’ in the RDBV) Markhamia stipulata
(nationally ‘vulnerable’) and Madhuca passquiere (‘rare’ in the RDBV, and regionally
‘vulnerable’ as listed by IUCN, 2002). It seems that mature populations of these trees,
along with certain Dipterocarp species of Vatica and Hopea (the latter principally situated
upon lower areas with deeper, wetter soils) have been reduced to a small number of
mature individuals surviving in the limestone forest interior, where logging conditions are
much less favourable. These timber trees are among those earmarked by FIPI in the 1997
investment plan for rehabilitation of the forest edge upon the designation of the Nature
Reserve, which could serve to restore elements of the previous lowland soil-slope forest
cover over time (FIPI, 1997: see Chapter 5 for more details)
Aside from large-scale timber felling, which is relatively easy for forest protection
authorities to monitor, it is the smaller scale but more constant degradation of both forest
edge and forest interior which may be causing the most challenging threats to the forest
quality. On forest land allocated in areas surrounding the villages of all four communes
within the proposed area, collection of dead wood for fuel is permitted, but some
households in Kim Hy and An Tinh reported a shortage of this resource for their needs,
requiring that they cut small trees for this purpose, as well as for fencing to protect
dwellings, gardens and hill crops (principally from wandering livestock) – this was
especially a problem in Kim Hy commune, and is increasingly exacerbated by the
growing demand, with villagers sometimes having to travel over two kilometres into the
forest to collect fuel wood alongside other forest products. Traditionally a problem in the
hills to the north of Kim Hy, the villagers are turning increasingly towards the limestone
forest as a potential source of pole and fuel wood.
Neither is this problem restricted to the forest edge; the presence of gold miners, remnant
from a purge of the previously much higher population (approximately 3,000 according
to Geissman and Vu Ngoc Thach, 1998) by the local police in 1998, may also be having a
continued effect upon large stretches of the limestone forest. Some of these people are
local but many are from surrounding provinces or districts, and at least six mines with
Frontier Vietnam Forest Research Programme Technical Report No.24. 39