The People's Committee of Binh Dinh Province has issued a document ordering an investigation and response to the illegal deforestation and logging activities in the protection forest previously reported by SGGP Newspaper.
Several ancient trees in the protection forest at Van Canh District (Binh Dinh Province) have been illegally logged without detection of forest rangers working nearby.
Ta Cu Nature Reserve in Binh Thuan Province reported a deforestation case with an area of more than 4,900 square meters. However, through actual inspection, the deforestation area is up to nearly 20,000 sq.m.
In order to strengthen forest management and development, ensuring raw materials for exports of wooden furniture and forest products, Minister Le Minh Hoan signed a directive to launch tree planting and afforestation.
Over the past time, although authorities have strengthened drastic solutions to prevent deforestation and encroachment on forest land, the number of forest law violations has not tended to decrease.
Forests and forest land in the Central Highlands provinces have continuously decreased due to the deforestation pressure of tourism projects, agro-forestry projects, or the demand for arable land. The situation of forest land being destroyed and illegally invaded has taken place in many places. Subjects have even changed the forest land into the land with a red book (Certificate of land-use rights).
Through screening more than 100 subjects, the investigative agency has identified the group of people that conducted the largest-ever deforestation in Da Lat City in Lam Dong Province.
According to the Vietnam Administration of Forestry (VNFOREST), the recent cases of deforestation and encroachment of forestland in Binh Dinh Province have been complicated and become more severe.
Even though the Prime Minister has ordered a closure to Central Highlands forests for a long time, it is a fact that the forests here are being encroached from different directions. Statistics reveal that the total surface area of these forests is only 2.5 million hectares, and the situation is getting worse.
Since 2010, the surface area of forests in Phu Quoc City of Kien Giang Province has continuously decreased to only 37,000ha now. At present, the city is trying its best to maintain this area despite encountering various challenges from illegal logging.
Local authorities have been investigating the cause of the incident in which around 200 35-year-old pine trees in Section 6, Sub-Area 592 in Tam Xuan 2 Commune, Nui Thanh District, Quang Nam Province, were poisoned in order to kill them gradually.
Authorities have recently discovered that about 100 hectares of forest in Ea Sup District of the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak had been deforested.
Although the use purpose of forest land has not been converted, the investor of the Truong Son Dong Road Project has blatantly bulldozed and destroyed more than 15 hectares of special-use forest of Chu Yang Sin National Park to build the road.
According to reflections of local people living in Huynh Gian Bac village, Phuoc Hoa commune, Tuy Phuoc district, Binh Dinh province to the reporter of Sai Gon Giai Phong (SGGP) Newspaper, more than 140 hectares of ancient Casuarina forest considering as a type of protective tree amid natural disaster and sand storms, “green lungs” for over 500 households with 2,000 people were recently chopped down and completely destroyed.
Unsustainable livelihoods, including the chopping down of protective forests for agricultural production and building houses near streams and rivers, have increased risks of natural disasters, officials admitted at a meeting yesterday.
