Non-Timber Forest Products in Nui Chua National Park, Ninh Thuan Province

1. Non-Timber Forest Products in Nui Chua National Park, Ninh Thuan Province Luu Hong Truong, Nguyen Vinh Hien, Nguyen Tan Dan, Vu Ngoc Long Center for Biodiversity and Development (CBD) Institute of Tropical Biology 85 Tran Quoc Toan, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Tel/Fax: +84-8-9320355. Email: hongtruongluu@yahoo.com Introduction Nui Chua National Park is located in Ninh Thuan Province (Figure 1 and 2). The location is thought to be the driest part of Vietnam with high temperature, low rainfall and long dry season. A former study of CBD (Vu et al., 2000b) reported about using NTFP in the local communities. Beside large amounts of wood and charcoal, NTFP such as animals, honey, ornamental plants, orchids and fruits are collected. Medicinal plants perhaps are important for health care in the region, especially for ethnic groups – mainly the indigenous Raglai accounting for 22% of total 53,409 persons living both in the core- and bufferzones. Depending strongly on forest resources, the Raglai harvest NTFP for home consumption and selling to middle persons. This poster presents the update progress of CBD to find out possibilities to develop potential NTFP to contribute to conserve the high biodiversity of the park and to improve the livelihood of local communities. Supports and cooperation are highly appreciated. Figure 1: Location of Nui Chua NP. Figure 2: A view of Nui Chua NP. • Progress • Since 2005, PRA surveys have been conducted in the bufferzone to know about NTFP that the Raglai and Cham communities exploit for home using and commercial purposes (Figure 3). It is noticeable that their indigenous knowledge on NTFP, especially on medicinal plants, is facing risks of loss in the near future. This needs an urgent conserving reaction from the responsible and concerned community. • The recorded data indicate that the Raglai rely heavily on forest resources as their income source for at least 8 months a year. About 56% of their annual income is from forest resources. However, most of profit generated from forest products is earned by middlemen. • Several NTFP are under severe exploitation. Trapping wild animals often occurs for local consumption and trade to other regions. Meanwhile, logging and charcoal production remain a question to the conservation of the park (Figure 4). Figure 3: Community interview. Figure 5:Sterculia foetida and its gum – potential NTFP for development. • Next steps • It is targeted to determine several NTFP potential for sustainable development (Figure 5). The Product Selection Matrix will be used in this process. This requires inputs of social – economic – ecological information of candidate NTFPs which is the subject for the next activities of CBD. Models of planting these NTFP available elsewhere will be investigated for applicability in the bufferzone. • Community and provincial workshops will be organized with the participation of stakeholders, including local communities, traders, managers of the park and local governments, to establish an action plan to conserve and develop potential NTFP in 2008. • CBD is looking for additional supports to document and thus conserve the indigenous knowledge of Raglai and Cham people on forest resources (Figure 6). Figure 6: Indigenous knowledge being lost. Figure 4: Charcoal production Reference Vu, N.L., Diep, D.P., Hoang, M.D., Luu, H.T., Le, B.T. 2001. Biodiversity of and social impacts to Nui Chua Nature Reserve. Scientific report. 54pages. ITB. In English. Acknowledgements The present activities of CBD on NTFP in Nui Chua National Park has been being supported by Siemenpuu Foundation, Finland and Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology. We are grateful to the managers and staff of Nui Chua NP for their support for our activities. The cooperation of the local people is highly appreciated.