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This stop is Vietnam

Natural History, March, 2003 by Peter Brown

Isn't it odd, really, that so much of what we outsiders know about Vietnam is colored by the memory of the war? As someone who came of age in the late 1960s, I still find it hard to put aside the terrible associations some of the names conjure: Mekong River, Gulf of Tonkin, Ho Chi Minh trail (soon to be a major superhighway), even the description "mountains and jungles of Vietnam." Yet behind those names from ten thousand wartime dispatches is a land that is home to an incredible diversity of life-forms, including literally hundreds of species new to science that were hidden by decades of conflict.

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Vietnam lies at the center of a tectonic traffic jam. Mountains and rivers arose from collisions of three tectonic plates, creating an immense variety of ecosystems in the country as well as some formidable barriers to species migration. Swings of climate--hot and cold, wet and dry--buffeted the landscape. During ice ages long ago, sea levels plunged and the continental shelf off the shores of Vietnam turned into dry land. Some species roamed across the newly exposed land. Then, when the climate warmed and sea levels rose again, populations became trapped and isolated on newly created islands. Other species, which once ranged freely across cool valleys, were chased up to cooler mountains as the lowland climate began to warm; eventually they became isolated by altitude instead of by seawater. With time, the isolated populations evolved and diverged, then remixed when the barriers to their spread eventually receded once more.

With this issue the editors of Natural History invite you back to Vietnam, a country that has become both a hot tourist destination and an ecologist's dream. Join Nguyen Thi Dao as she recalls running as a child through the forests of Cuc Phuong National Park, Vietnam's oldest national park (see "My Life as a Forest Creature," page 70). Marvel at photographer Mark Moffett's glorious image of a caterpillar native to the rainforests of Vietnam (see "Pretty Poison" page 10). Enjoy the reminiscences of Le Anh Tu Packard, as she recalls the aromatic dishes her grandmother flavored with the sublime extract of the ca cuong, the water bug that for the Vietnamese is practically a symbol of the highest culinary art (see "Bug Juice," page 63). Finally, take a field trip with Eleanor J. Sterling, Martha M. Hurley, and Raoul H. Bain (see "Vietnam's Secret Life" page 50) to discover how the nation's rich biodiversity, coupled with the crazy-quilt complexity of its ecosystems, arose directly from the pushes and pulls of its turbulent climatic and geologic history.

Thus informed, you won't want to miss the new exhibit at New York City's American Museum of Natural History, "Vietnam: Journeys of Body, Mind, and Spirit," opening March 15.

As this issue of Natural History goes to press, we have just begun to mourn the loss of the seven astronauts who perished in the breakup of the space shuttle Columbia. Our hearts go out to their families, to their extended family at NASA, and to all our readers who share in the sadness of this tragedy.

This stop is Vietnam

Natural History, March, 2003 by Peter Brown

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