Mekong Delta national park fire caused by trespassers

By Ngoc Tai June 11, 2024 | 11:46 pm PT

People putting out flames at the Tram Chim national park in Dong Thap Province, June 11, 2024. Photo by VnExpress/Phung Tien

A fire at a national park in the Mekong Delta's Dong Thap Province on Tuesday was caused by people carelessly handling flames when they trespassed into the area, local police said.

The Dong Thap police on Tuesday said they are investigating the trespassing into Tram Chim national park.

The management unit of the park said two small fires were first spotted in the A1 area of the national park on Tuesday, before they quickly spread due to strong winds. The flames grew wide enough to even invade the gardens of nearby neighborhoods, threatening over 100 families.

Authorities had deployed around 250 people, along with numerous firefighting equipment, to battle the flames. The forest fire was put under control by around 5 p.m. Twenty ha of acacia forest were damaged in the fire, along with some gardens of the people.

Tram Chim national park, spanning 7,500 ha, is home to several rare bird species, especially the Burmese Sarus flying crane. Numbers, in their thousands several decades ago, have been dropping over time and Dong Thap now is carrying out projects to recover the population of the rare birds.

People often enter the national park illegally to raise cattle and hunt for animals and plants, and the situation has persisted for years despite several methods employed by the park’s management unit.