Bio-diversity

Dendrocalamus Membranaceus Munro is an indigenous bamboo, which has long been used as materials for construction and for paper industry. Thanh Hoa province has the largest area of this indigenous bamboo in Viet Nam and has great potential in becoming a highly economic and specialized bamboo growing area. This indigenous bamboo provides the main source of income for people in the central mountainous area of Thanh Hoa. In 2004, the Government decided to build a Paper Company in Chau Loc, Hau Loc, Thanh Hoa with the capacity of 60,000 tonnes/year. The Company has planned to plant 70,000 ha of this indigenous bamboo, of which most of the area has been allocated to the community. However, the bamboo forests in the province have been severely degraded in terms of quality and area due to over-exploitation of forest resources and decrease in area for other trees such as sugar cane. The area of degraded bamboo forest accounts for about 80% of the existing forest. The project VN/04/013 aims to build an integrated model of transferring techniques to properly use and exploit bamboo forest resources, contributing to solving the problem of forest degradation and poverty alleviation in the project area. The project will give high priority in building demonstration models of sustainable use of bamboo forest resources with priorities on such technical issues as selecting and producing good quality seedlings; intensive cultivation in all processes of planting, caring, and exploiting bamboo forests; paying attention to pest management; development of medicinal trees under forest; and diversifying products from bamboo.The project also pays attention to promote the replication of the models through building technical capacity for the community, developing and disseminating technical guidelines, and drawing and sharing lessons learned to be drawn from the project. The project is expected to be implemented in 3 communes in Ngoc Lac, i.e Nguyet An, Ngoc Son and My Tan.

Vietnam