'Special task force' in the middle of Pu Mat forest

“Eat in the forest, sleep in the bush” to rescue wild animals

In mid-December, under the bitter cold of the first monsoon winds, Nguyen Huu Trung (28 years old) and his colleagues were still packing their belongings, preparing for a long trip to the forest. To cope with the cold rain during the days of eating and sleeping in the deep forest, they had to carry a lot of belongings on their backs. This was the team's last long trip to the forest in 2022.

Trung is the coordinator of the Forest Protection Team in Pu Mat National Park. This team is also known as the Antipoaching Team - the first team to appear in Vietnam to actively support the rangers. In addition, the team also has many other names such as "Wildlife Protection Team" or "Special Task Force"... The team has 15 members, of which Trung is responsible for planning and coordinating with rangers to deploy patrol routes, sweeps, protect the forest and promptly prevent and remove traps and camps exploiting animals and plants in Pu Mat.

The team was established by the Wildlife Conservation Center in Vietnam and paid salaries since 2018. Most of them are engineers and forestry bachelors, recruited, trained and thoroughly coached. Not only requiring knowledge, forest skills, good health, to be selected, candidates must love the forest, especially, love wildlife. The income is only over 8 million VND/month, hardly commensurate with the effort put in, but since being selected, the 15 members of the team have been very attached and passionate about the job.

The arduous journey. Photo: HT

Nguyen Huu Trung is from Thanh Chuong district. After graduating from the Forestry University, he returned to the Pu Mat mountains and forests. The nature of his work is often deep in the forest, sometimes Trung does not return home for a whole month. Working in this team, each month there must be at least 2 trips to the forest, each trip usually lasts more than 1 week. Their luggage includes rice, dried fish, salted pork, pots, hammocks, tents, medicine... Each person carries a sack weighing about 20 kg on their back. To have the strength to walk through the forest for long days in unfavorable weather conditions, they also bring ducks and chickens hanging on their hips to eat in the forest to gain strength. Each time they go into the forest, they are divided into many groups, each group has only about 5 people.

On each trip to the forest, their biggest fear is the traps set by hunters in the forest like a net of heaven and earth. If they are not careful, they can easily get into trouble. In addition, they also face fierce resistance from hunters, with homemade hunting guns always ready in their hands. Meanwhile, despite being called a "Special Task Force", they still have no support tools. On each trip, during the day they go through the forest, wade through streams, and at night they sleep in hammocks. Some days, the group members have to walk dozens of kilometers in the forest without finding a water source. Without water, at night the members have to use plastic bags to collect dew from large mossy tree trunks. Leeches, forest mosquitoes, fruit flies, rotten and broken branches, and sudden floods are constant threats.

Rescuing trapped wild animals. Photo: HT

Paying debt to the green forest

At Pu Mat National Park, we also met a rather special character. That is Nguyen Van Huy (41 years old), from Bo Trach district, Quang Binh province. Huy is currently a part-time employee for the "Special Task Force". His hometown is located next to Phong Nha - Ke Bang National Park, Huy has been familiar with the mountains and forests since childhood, living off the forest. With more than 20 years of experience in the forest, he is a right-hand man for the whole team on each patrol.

More than 20 years ago, Mr. Huy first set foot in Pu Mat National Park following his fellow countrymen to search for agarwood. Since then, he has become familiar with every stream in the old forests along the Nghe border. The journey to find agarwood lasts several months in the middle of the forest, and when there is a shortage of food, hunting and capturing wild animals for meat is inevitable. Therefore, in addition to his agarwood-finding skills, Mr. Huy has gradually become a skilled hunter. "However, the most dangerous thing is that groups of people like Mr. Huy often teach local people how to effectively hunt and capture wild animals," said Mr. Nguyen Huu Trung about his former opponents, but now close colleagues.

Until one day at the end of 2018, a group of 4 people searching for agarwood in Quang Binh province, including Mr. Huy, were crossing the Pu Mat forest to Laos when they were discovered by the "Special Task Force" and the forest rangers and border guards. All 4 people were taken to a nearby border post. Here, the 4 people were administratively fined 300,000 VND each for illegally entering the border area. While the 4 people were being processed, Mr. Tran Xuan Cuong - Director of Pu Mat National Park directly came to meet and inquire. Knowing that these people were very good at going into the forest and knew the terrain of Pu Mat forest, Mr. Cuong offered to hire 4 people to stay. 2 of them accepted, however, until now, only Mr. Huy has stuck with this job.

Since its establishment, this "Task Force" has conducted more than 2,000 patrols, with 7,466 days of walking in the forest.

Although he had no qualifications or training, Huy's experience in the forest made the whole team admire him. Every patrol, through the forest for dozens of kilometers, without a map, Huy never led the group astray. He only needed to look at the forest canopy and the moss growing on the tree trunks to recognize the directions. Huy passed on his experience in the forest and how to detect and deal with illegal loggers and hunters in Pu Mat to his teammates. "Illegal loggers" in Pu Mat are also people who have lived in the forest for many generations, so going to the forest and dealing with the forest protection force is also "no joke". After the traps set up all over the forest were discovered and destroyed, the hunters switched to individual traps and did not set up huts in places that were easy to detect. However, these hunters could not fool Nguyen Van Huy.

Since its establishment, this “Task Force” has conducted more than 2,000 patrols, with 7,466 days of walking in the forest. They also calculated the total walking distance of the team to be up to 68,665 km. During those forest trips, the Team discovered 861 violators, and recorded 370 cases. In addition, they also removed nearly 15,000 animal traps, discovered 311 animals that were hunted, shot, and transported; destroyed more than 1,000 hunters’ camps… Through camera traps, Pu Mat National Park assessed that since the team was established, the number of wild animals in the park has increased significantly.

Tien Hung