Cát Tiên National Park


Cát Tiên National Park is a national park located in the south of Vietnam, approximately 150 km north of Ho Chi Minh City. It has an area of about 720 km2 and protects one of the largest areas of lowland tropical forests left in Vietnam.

History

The surrounding area was originally occupied by the Ma people - especially in the area that is now Cat Loc and Stieng people in western Dong Nai Province. After the formation of the Park, many of these people were re-settled in Talai village, to the south-west of Nam Cat Tien.
Cát Tiên National Park was protected initially in 1978 as two sectors, Nam Cat Tien and Tay Cat Tien. Another sector, Cat Loc, was gazetted as a rhinoceros reserve in 1992 upon the discovery of a population of the Vietnamese Javan rhinoceros, an occasion that brought the park into the world's eye. The three areas were combined to form one park in 1998. Nam Cat Tien is contiguous with Vĩnh Cửu nature reserve thus providing an enlarged area for species to breed. The forest is now protected by the :vi:Kiểm lâm Việt Nam|Kiểm lâm with responsibilities for managing poaching, fire control, and other issues.
Parts of the park area suffered historically during the Vietnam War when it was extensively sprayed with defoliant herbicides. However, substantial further damage was done by logging up until the 1990s. To this day these areas have extensive bamboo and grassland cover and trees have not yet grown back.

Archaeology

The Cát Tiên archaeological site is located just outside the park boundary on the northern bank of the Dong Nai river. Excavations carried out between 1994 and 2003 revealed a group of temples, belonging to a previously unknown Hindu civilization which probably inhabited the area between the 4th century and 9th centuries AD. A large number of a number of gold, bronze, ceramic, coloured stone, and glass artefacts, are currently displayed in the Da Lat museum.

Habitats and flora

Cát Tiên National Park consists of seasonal tropical forests, grasslands and riparian areas, with Park Authorities identifying five major habitat types as follows:
1. Primary evergreen forest areas perhaps comprise only about 2% of the Nam Cat Tien area; can be highly diverse but are dominated by trees in two families :
2. Primary and secondary mixed or deciduous forest :
Where soils are well-drained the following trees are common:
The abundance L. calyculata is discussed by Blanc et al. especially as an indicator of secondary forest. "It appears to be a very good competitive species able to regenerate on denuded areas: along roads and on land abandoned after cultivation. Human disturbances have mostly affected Dipterocarpaceae for resin and Fabaceae for their wood."
The low canopy and under-story zones contains species such as the endemic Cycas inermis; a number of palms are common, including Caryota mitis, Licuala and Pinanga spp., together with a wide range of fruit species such as figs and wild bananas.
3. Secondary forest with abundant bamboo species: this due to human activity, the forest having been degraded by logging, forest fires and in some areas war-time defoliants, which have caused the forest canopy to be replaced with bamboos. Common trees include Lagerstroemia calyculata, Mesua sp. and Xylia xylocarpa, with bamboo species present.
4. Bamboo forest may also have been affected by human activity, including areas where forest was previously cleared for subsistence agriculture creating favourable conditions for bamboos; species include: Bambusa balcooa, B. procera, and Gigantochloa spp.
5. Seasonally flooded grasslands: CTNP has substantial area of grassland and wetlands
As in most seasonal tropical forests the Park has an abundance of epiphytes. Lianas are abundant and include:
Ancistrocladus tectorius, box beans: Entada spp., 'monkey ladders': Lasiobema scandens and Rattans: especially Calamus spp. in wet areas.

[Riparian] areas

In flat lowland areas and especially along streams, areas of freshwater swamp forest notable tree species often include: Ficus benjamina, Livistona saribus, Crateva, Syzygium and Horsfieldia spp. Naturally occurring patches of Bambusa blumeana are also abundant in riparian areas and flooding forest. Other plants include Schumannianthus dichotomus which occurs in muddy areas along streams.

Scientific and conservation activities

Numerous endemic species, having their type locality at CTNP, have been described by Vietnamese and international scientists: including those at the Vietnam-Russia Tropical Centre. More than 20 species of organisms have the name "catienensis" or similar, including two palms, the bracket fungus Tomophagus cattienensis, two reptiles and 4 insects to date.
Between the Park headquarters and Ta Lai village there are substantial replanting areas, including a 200 ha area supported by European Community between 1996-98.

Fauna

Mammals

The park hosts many mammal species; the following may be encountered:
Primates include the endemic golden-cheeked gibbon Nomascus gabriellae
Scandentia :
 in CTNP
Carnivores:
s are very common
Bats :
Rodents and Lagomorphs - the Park list includes:
Other notable mammal species, including some that are vulnerable or endangered, include:
Besides the gaur, recently confirmed even-toed ungulate records include:
The park fauna included the Javan rhinoceros, and was one of only two populations in the world, until poachers shot and killed the last rhino in Cát Loc in 2010. There are also records of banteng and kouprey, but the latter may now be globally extinct, and wild Asian water buffalo no longer occur in Cat Tien. Some accounts also list Indochinese tigers, leopards, clouded leopards and dholes; however, a recent series of surveys did not confirm this.
es in Cát Tiên National Park

Birds

The park has an impressive list of including:
The includes the following notable species:
and two endemic species :
Agamid lizards
Snakes - 43 species recorded including:
in the Park
The most developed currently cover ants, butterflies, dragonflies, mosquitoes and termites; of the latter, Macrotermes spp. have an important ecological role, with large colony mounds very commonly encountered in the forest.
In 2007, the velvet-worm Eoperipatus totoro was discovered in the Crocodile Lake area by scientists of the Vietnam-Russia Tropical Centre.

Threats

Cat Tien comprises an important reserve in Vietnam, both for the habitat it protects and the number of species it contains. Although the population of the Javan rhinoceros went into extinction, it is still home to 40 IUCN Red List species, and protects around 30% of Vietnam's species. The park is, however, threatened by encroachment from local communities, illegal logging and poaching. In addition, the park is too small for the larger species found inside it. This has led to either their local extinction or conflict with local people as these animals move beyond the confines of the park. This problem is particularly intense for the park's elephant population, which is prone to wandering and is considered too small to be self sustainable.
Since the early 1990s, partly as a result of the discovery of rhinos in the park, international donors and the Vietnamese government began to invest more money in protecting the park and managing the resources of local State Forest Enterprises, nearby and adjoining forests, in co-ordination with the park as a whole. There have been moves to combine a management plan that allows for both traditional park management and some limited resource utilisation by local people, which include the Stieng, Chau Ma and Cho'ro minorities.
In 2008 the Forestry Protection Department collaborating with the , Monkey World Ape Rescue and Pingtung Wildlife Rescue Centre founded the Dao Tien Endangered Primate Species Centre. The centre focusses on the rescue, rehabilitation and release of the four endangered primates found in Cat Tien, developing Government guidelines for release of primates. The centre conducts informative daily educational tours explaining the centre's work, with a chance to see young rehabilitated gibbons in the trees.