PAST SUCCESSES

Initiating Conservation Of Threatened Vietnamese Cypress Trees

Project Dates: July 2001 – May 2006 (see also Vietnam Conifers in Current Projects)

Indo-China is a hot-spot for conifer diversity. Of the 28 species of endemic conifer in Vietnam, 21 are thought to be endangered. From 2001, FFI was one of the collaborators in the multi-institutional Vietnam Conifer Conservation Status Review, published in 2004.

Building on this knowledge and experience, the Global Trees Campaign developed a project to implement some of the review’s recommendations. The project, funded by the Flagship Species Fund and based in the Hoang Lien Son Mountain forests, concentrated on three flagship conifer species - Taiwania cryptomeroides, Xanthocyparis vietnamensis and Fokienia hodginsii. Two of these are recent discoveries for Vietnam: Taiwania cryptomerioides was identified as a new record for Vietnam in October 2001 and Xanthocyparis vietnamensis, a new species, was discovered in 1999 in remote karst limestone mountains in the northern province of Ha Giang, close to the Chinese border.

The project aimed to initiate action for these species, including assessments, protection and nursery cultivation, as appropriate, and to act as a catalyst for further initiatives to conserve and restore Vietnam’s charismatic but severely threatened conifers.

Outcomes

Successes included:

• A comprehensive Conservation Status and Action Plan for Xanthocyparis vietnamensis (download PDF of report here). A small pilot nursery for the species was also established.

• A report on the trade and subsistence use of Fokienia hodginsii in two provinces in northern Vietnam (download PDF of report here).

• A draft investment plan for a Taiwania cryptomeroides protected area, as a contribution to the on-going participatory development of a new nature reserve that would incorporate all known living Taiwania in Vietnam.

Building on this work, a project to establish a national Conifer Conservation Centre (CCC) and work on protection and restoration of priority conifer species is now underway, in partnership with the Institute of Ecology & Biological Resources (IEBR) – see Vietnam conifers.

We are currently supporting further conifer restoration work through our Conservation Gifts at Tree2MyDoor.com - click for more information and to plant a conifer tree as a gift.

Back to Past Successes