Forty members of the Chau Ma ethnic minority group have been trained as professional forest supervisors who can use the Global Positioning System (GPS) for their work in Da Teh commune, Bao Lam district in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong.The GPS training course took place at the end of last year, as part of a project to aid the preservation of biodiversity in Vietnam.The project is financed by the Ministry of Natural Resource and Environment and Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.Lam Dong was chosen as the first of Vietnam’s provinces in which the project would be implemented. Associate professor Dr. Bao Huy, deputy head of the Southeast Asian Network for Agroforestry Education, was in charge of training the Chau Ma.Huy recently took the trainees to the Loc Bac secondary forest so that they could practice. He opened his GPS, chose a spot in the forest, gave the device to Ka Cuong, a trainee, and said, “Take us there to survey the area.”Ka Cuong intended to take a longer route, but Huy asked him to cut across the forest. Huy said that a forest supervisor should follow any route to record changes in the surroundings.Ka Cuong and his Chau Ma friends were confused by the GPS device at first. However, after being guided by Huy for a moment, he finally said, “Going across the forest is about two kilometers.”The GPS had to work continuously because Ka Cuong used it so proficiently. He then taught other trainees like Ka Chinh and Ka Rieu how to operate it as well.“It is best to let them guide each other in their own language,” Huy said. By the time they reached the destination, each trainee knew how to use the GPS.With stakes and ropes, the trainees divided the forest into 1,000 square meter plots to calculate and measure the diameter of trees. It took them one hour to measure the first plot, but with practice the time needed fell to 45 minutes for the second plot, and then 30 minutes for the third. They determined the coordinate of each big tree and took notes.Huy was very pleased by the quick reports and said that international standards permit an error margin of five percent, but these reports had a margin of only two percent.Before this training course, Ka Cuong believed it would take his entire life to count all the trees in Bao Lam forest. However, he has since changed his mind.Ka Rieu said that, “From now on, GPS will help make it clear which parts of the forest have been cut down and who I have to report to.”The Chau Ma will use GPS to report all activities related to 56,000 hectares of forest in Loc Bac, Loc Bao and Loc Lam communes of Bao Lam district to staff at the biodiversity preservation project.Ka Hien said that before the training, he thought there was still a lot of forest left in the area. However, after one day of training, he realized that the forest has shrunk significantly, and the Chau Ma has acquired a bad reputation for destroying it.Pointing to the GPS on his hip, Ka Hien said that he and his friends would prove how much they love the green forest.At night, Ka Ba showed us a knife mark on a tree and explained that it was a signal that the tree was owned by someone who was about to chop it down.Ka Ba said that the State tasked him to manage 24 hectares of forest, an area which has quietly suffered losses in the number and species of trees. A once dense forest has become thin.Ka Bien, another trainee in the group, admitted that he used to transport illegal timber for people who came to destroy the forest.He said that he felt disgraced, but had to do it for a living. He added that his life has taken a strange turn, as he has changed careers from lumberjack to forest caretaker. According to Huy, the State assigns rangers to manage the forest, but there are no monitors to judge their performance. In the biodiversity preservation project, native residents will carry out that mission with the assistance of tools given to them by international organizations. These two groups will monitor each other to protect the forest. (tuoitrenews.vn Jan 22)
