Southern national park named Vietnam’s sixth Ramsar site
Friday, October 31, 2014, 15:45 GMT+7
A national park in southern Vietnam will receive a certificate of recognition as the Southeast Asian country’s sixth Ramsar site on Saturday, the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said Tuesday on its website.
Con Dao National Park, located in the Con Dao archipelago administered by the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau, will become the world’s 2,203rd Ramsar site upon the official recognition, the ministry said.
It includes a part of the archipelago and the surrounding sea and is home to 144 species, including 29 mammals, 85 birds, and 46 reptiles.
Its marine ecosystem comprises mangroves, seagrass beds, and over 270 coral species which cover a total area of around 1,000 hectares underwater.
In 1995, Con Dao National Park was cited in the “A Global Representative System of Marine Protected Areas” list issued by the World Bank and dedicated to endangered sites around the world.
The park gives visitors a chance to discover and learn about the diverse ecosystem of tropical forests and see rare animals which cannot be found anywhere else, such as the nicoba pigeon, masked booby, red-billed tropicbird, and pied imperial pigeon.
Con Dao National Park, which spans a total area of 19,991 hectares, is an archipelago of 14 islands located some 80km off the coast of southern Vietnam, according to the website http://www.ramsar.org.
Vietnam has six Ramsar sites including Tram Chim National Park in the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap, Ca Mau National Park in the southernmost province of Ca Mau, Xuan Thuy Natural Wetland Reserve in the northern province of Nam Dinh, Bau Sau in Cat Tien National Park in the southern province of Dong Nai, Ba Be lake in the mountainous province of Bac Kan, and Con Dao National Park.
A Ramsar site must follow the Ramsar Convention, which is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands recognizing the fundamental ecological functions of wetlands and their economic, cultural, scientific, and recreational value.
The convention is named after the Iranian city of Ramsar, where it was signed in 1971.
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