Back to the Forest

Friday, December 19, 2008
Wow! Christmas is less than a week away and it doesn't really feel like it! We are back in the forest-it's been our first full week here in more than a month! We began by walking the transects. The forest feels so different. It is amazing how much it changed in 2 weeks! Some of the deciduous trees have really started to change color and lose their leaves. I sat at reception earlier in the week and watched a huge Bang Lang tree drop all of its yellow leaves. There has been very little rain. It sprinkled one night and rained pretty good another night, but for the most part the skies are clear, the air is cooler and drier. As we walk in the forest it everything around me feels different. The underbrush feels thinner, and although walking is noisy as we crunch on dried leaves, the forest itself is very still. The sad part is that with the changing seasons, the monkeys have moved into a new routine and we haven't seen them. It's funny, because we see them on the transect when we aren't looking for them, but when we are trying to watch them, they don't appear.

Last week FPD and police showed up at the park to conduct a raid. They left very early to go into a village, and returned with 10 macaques, bags full of snakes, turtles, opossums, and the remains of forest pigs-all these animals had been taken from the forest. I realize that I understand so little about how things work here. Things are rather complicated with illegal animal trade, the use of forest lands, and the need for people to do things in order to provide for their families. Tet, the lunar New Year celebration, is coming soon and situations tend to become even more complicated. I guess in the U.S. our equivalent would be Christmas or Thanksgiving, when the expectations are so high for families to provide food, presents, and the like. People in regular, middle-class families feel the crunch, but the families that really struggle are the ones that have a hard time making ends meet on a daily basis. It is a situation that has to be dealt with when people talk about conservation. I am beginning to think that conservation is a luxury. Our national parks were created because of their beauty. They are spaces that can be visited, but not used, unless it is to help control populations (like limited hunting for deer or elk). Here in Vietnam the need of local people to continue using the forest has to be balanced with conserving rare and/or endangered species. I am learning that the approach to education has to be different as well.

Right now, our days are spent going into the forest in the morning. Jonathan frequently does this on his own while I go for a run and get things started for us. We will spend the day doing work (email, reading articles, studying Vietnamese, figuring out how to find the monkeys!!) During that time we sit in our "office", aka the Bamboo Cantina. Our friend, Matt, is also here working with the bears and the 3 of us can frequently be seen sitting there working. A jack-fruit tree is right near the cafe, and the fruits have been growing for the last few months. They must be ripe now because the macaques that come by nearly every afternoon at about 3:30 have been tearing at the fruit- 2 have been eaten already! Following our "office work", we sometimes go back into the forest for the afternoon. The monkeys are traditionally most active in the mornings and the evenings (sunrise and sunset) so we try to see them then.

The photos are of the forest, the raid, the "office", and the jack-fruit. Oh, and one of us sending hugs to everyone!!