My life as a forest creature: growing up with the Cuc Phuong National Park

Nguyen Thi Dao

I was born in a hammock on a forest path in Cuc Phuong National Park. (The health center to which my mother was being carried was just a little too far away.) The path is still used, though it no longer leads back to our home. As a little girl, I was lucky enough to have the forest as a playground, but my family was relocated out of the park in the late 1990s. Unfortunately my favorite litchi trees were not relocated with us.

Declared a protected area by Ho Chi Minh in 1962, Cuc Phuong became Vietnam's first national park in 1966. It was spared the effects of the war, unlike much of the nation's environment. Covering roughly ninety square miles, it encompasses forested limestone karst mountains and one main, central valley. Sometimes we children were caught in restricted areas by the forest rangers, but not often. I remember one ranger gently telling me not to leave my machete--we all carried rusty knives back then!--stuck in a tree trunk while I played. The machete, he said, could kill the tree.

My friends and I took little-used routes to the outer edges of the valley to graze and mind our cows and water buffalo--the job of most rural kids. Mainly, though, our cows grazed themselves, and we explored the forest and the streams. Adventure was always around the corner. Once, while collecting wild honey from a hive of the large forest bees, I was caught by the angry swarm. I will never forget the panic. Luckily, one of the village elders picked me up, held me tight, and spat chewed rosebud juice at each of the stings, gently dabbing it on. The pain instantly subsided.

On another occasion I was walking through the forest, looking for my cow, when I suddenly felt I was being watched from above. I looked up and saw a green snake as thick as my big toe. I was scared stiff and ran as fast as I could through the dense forest, paying no heed to the scratching thorn-bushes. Snakes are common in Cuc Phuong; some, such as the banded krait, are deadly poisonous.

My friends from the local Muong ethnic group told me that if you didn't disturb the snakes and the bees, they wouldn't go out of their way to hurt you. Relocated from their traditional villages in the center of the park, the Muong now occupy shanties in the parched, stony foothills. From their dusty doorways they can hear the thrumming forest and sense the karst mountains towering above, even when the peaks are shrouded in clouds.

The legendary May Bac ("silver cloud") Peak was the place I thought most of conquering, because it is the highest mountain in the park, about 2,100 feet. Once you are up there, you are enclosed in a cloud of forest mist. Sometimes the cloud creeps into the bottommost corners of the lowest valley.

The forest is never still. Insects, particularly the humming cicadas, are its pulse. Tree frogs that never come down to the ground break into a chorus on some unseen and unfelt cue; land crabs the size of small dogs clatter through the undergrowth.

Butterflies light up the gloom, congregating in sunny spots and above pools. At least 280 species, including birdwings, live in the park. They often land in muddy areas, and when you come near them, they take off and circle around you. In spring and summer I used to swim in a colorful butterfly sea. It felt like being in a fairy world.

It rains a lot in summer. I once got lost with my friends in a downpour. We thought it would be a good idea to follow a stream out of the forest, because we knew that streams sometimes intersected our usual paths. How disappointed we were when the stream we were following suddenly disappeared underground! (Now I realize that Cuc Phuong has a natural underground drainage system that absorbs all the rainfall.) Luckily, we found our way out after five hours of struggle, soaked and mosquito bitten. A lot of leeches helped themselves to our blood.

There are many caves in the park's limestone terrain. We used to play hide-and-seek in them; they were pleasantly warm in winter and cool in summer. The must-visit exemplar is Nguoi Xua Cave (prehistoric man cave), where human remains as old as 12,000 years have been discovered.

The best season to visit Cuc Phuong is from the beginning of December, when the heavy rains are over, through April. It is often dry and pleasant then. But as children, my friends and I found summer to be the best season for collecting wild fruits, many of which are similar to their cultivated counterparts. We had to compete with the squirrels and bats.

Cuc Phuong is home to an estimated 2,000 plant species; just last year my brother, a park botanist, discovered a new orchid (Vietorchid aurea). The park is also renowned for its big trees. The most famous one is a thousand year-old Terminalia myriocarpa. It takes seventeen people to encircle it, stretching their arms around its trunk.

About 450 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians--38 per cent of the known species in Vietnam--live in the park. Many are endemic, such as Delacour's langur, which we Vietnamese often call the white-shorts langur because of its white bottom. It is a hard animal to spot in the forest, because the vegetation is dense and these monkeys are very smart.

It is lovely to wake up in the morning in the park; you hear the birds singing and you see them flying overhead. You can also see the silver pheasant along the trails; the males look particularly handsome with their long white tails.

Many nocturnal animals also live in the park, such as Owston's palm civet, which loves to eat the noisy crickets and quiet earthworms. When I was a child in the forest at night, the bats swooping past my ears or the movement of an unseen animal in the dark would make my hair stand on end. Sometimes it still does. But it is always magical on a summer's eve when the fireflies are out; they make the forest look like a Christmas night, with thousands of little lights blinking in giant Christmas trees.

For visitor information, contact: Cuc Phuong National Park Nho Quan District Ninh Binh Province Vietnam (84-30) 848-006/-009/-007

Fax: (84-30) 848-008

A SAMPLING OF SPECIES

Mammals Clouded leopard, Asian golden cat, Owston's palm civet, Asiatic black bear, crested gibbon, Delacour's langur, Phayre's langur, lesser slow loris, Chinese pangolin, Cuc Phuong squirrel, giant flying squirrels, and horseshoe bats.

Birds Eurasian tree sparrow, white-rumped munia, scaly-breasted munia, common kingfisher, white-breasted kingfisher, melodious laughing thrush, black-throated laughing thrush, long-tailed shrike, green peafowl, grey peacock pheasant, silver pheasant, great hornbill, Indian pied hornbill, chestnut-necklaced partridge, red-collared woodpecker, and red-vented barbet.

Other animals include snakes, such as cobra, king cobra, and banded krait; geckos, turtles, and frogs; fish (among them the Cuc Phuong catfish) and crabs; and countless insects and spiders.

Trees Parashorea chinensis, Terminalia myriocarpa, Tetrameles nudiflora, Cinnamonum balansae, Dracontomelum duperreanum, and Cuc Phuong pear.

Nguyen Thi Dao is a conservationist with the World Wildlife Fund Indochina Programme.

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