No longer many birds calling for flocks in the early morning. No longer footprints of animals by the stream. As night falls, the sounds that once made the soul of the old forest also thin out. Conservationists call it "empty forest" or "silent forest" - where trees still exist but animals have disappeared.
I read a report from the Vietnam Wildlife Conservation Center (SVW) and am haunted by the numbers. In just a few years, in Pu Mat National Park, conservation forces have removed more than 17,000 animal traps. Cat Tien National Park has more than 12,000 traps. In Dong Nai Nature - Culture Reserve, there are more than 10,000 other traps.
Each small wire trap lies still under the layer of rotten leaves. The bitter thing is that placing a trap only costs more than 1 USD, but removing it costs dozens of times more. Many animals that were once very familiar in Vietnamese forests are now only in photo books.
There is a detail that makes me think for a long time: Many of our forests today are actually better protected than before. Vietnam has preserved forest area, limited forest loss, and strengthened law enforcement. But keeping trees does not mean keeping life.
A forest without large animals will gradually lose its ability to self-operate. No longer predators at the forefront of the food chain. No longer animals spreading seeds. No longer the sound of life. The forest becomes a quiet, uneasy green space.
But in the middle of that picture, there are still rays of hope.
In Cat Tien National Park, Siamese crocodiles that were once extinct in the wild have been restored after many years of re-release. The Central region turtle species that almost disappeared due to hunting has now had hundreds of individuals raised and re-released back to nature.
But conservationists understand very well: Releasing an animal is one difficult thing, keeping it alive in a forest full of rope traps is many times more difficult.
Perhaps the most frightening thing is not that one species disappears completely, but that we gradually get used to the silence of the forest.
