EDL-Gen’s 5 Years of Fund Contribution to Phoukhaokouay National Protected Area on the Project of Biodiversity Project

EDL-Gen has contributed fund on conservation and rehabilitation of PhouKhaoKouay National Protected Area in total of 500,000,000 KIP; from 2011 to 2015. This project is under the supervision of Division for PhouKhaoKouay – PhouPhaNang National Protected Area Management (or Battalion 941), which was established to solve the problem of deforestation and define the rehabilitated area of the PhouKhaoKouay National Protected Forest. Thereafter, PhouKhaoKouay National Protected Forest is the abundance areas in term of biodiversity and covers the area of 200,000 hectares, which included 4 provinces: Vientiane Province, Bolikhamxay, Xaisomboun and Vientiane Capital; with 7 districts: Hom, Longxan, Keoudom, Thulakhom, Pakngum, Xaythany and Thaphabath district. There are 72 villages, 8,419 families and 50,514 inhabitants.

PhouKhaoKouay National Protected Areas is also the preserved forest for water resources such as: Nam Leuk, Nam Yong, Nam Mang, Nam Lo and Nam Thouay; the forest type included: highland mixed forest, lowland mixed forest, pine forest, mixed broad-leaves and sharp-leaves forest, highland-lowland dry evergreen forest and rehabilitated forest. Recently, the forest has gradually lost its green cover, due to many reasons like: the use of land for agricultural production, illegal timber – deforestation and wildlife hunting, wildfire, local settlement and infrastructure construction. Therefore, this project has aimed to conserve the diverse of the biodiversity, protect and manage the sustainable use of natural resources, aquatic animal and wildlife that already existed, in order to ensure the national socio-economic development in the future as well as the improvement of the capacity/knowledge of local authorities to the better level.

This project has been implemented in 4 main tasks:

• Surveying and collecting data/information of the devastation and define the rehabilitated areas within the managed reservoir of Nam Leuk HPP, PhouKhaoKouay National Protected Areas.
• Patrolling in order to stop the deforestation within PhouKhaoKouay National Protected Areas.
• Information dissemination/awareness raising on the management works of forestry resource conservation within PhouKhaoKouay National Protected Areas.
• On the occasion of National Arbour’s day, 1^st June; every year, to organize an event to plant more trees in order to restore the forest, within the surrounded villages, districts, provinces of PhouKhaoKouay National Protected Areas.

Hence, all activities that have been implemented corporately with National Protected Area Division, Forestry Management Department, Ministry of Natural Resource and Environment and related sectors from district, province and the local people within the areas also have been well participated.

After the 5 years’ project implementation, the outcome shown that the data collection is improved to the better level, particularly area conditions, the deforestation conditions, also concluded the degradation of illegal hunting/selling aquatic animals and wildlife. According to that, the project has defined the forest area types especially, the definition of areas of the rehabilitated forest within the reservoir of Nam Leuk HPP. Besides, the data collection – the definition of forest areas and the better knowledge of local authorities/local people, the plantation on the 1^st of June each year, has made the increasing of green cover at 26.5 hectares of the empty dry areas; the project has planted 6 species and in total of 14,810 trees.

Accordingly, all implemented activities that have been successfully done, because of the good cooperation from all parties, including the budget contribution. Therefore, in term of the implementation of this project, there are still the problem occurred, mainly are the lack of vehicles and equipment for surveying and data collection. Thus, these works contained the sensible tasks and must be done continually and frequently, therefore, there would be the challenges occurred in term of budget and timelines, which still limited. Moreover, another challenge is that the acceptance level of the local people to new ideas was not yet very well covered because of the traditional norm/belief and still based on natural livelihood.

However, EDL-Gen has realized the need and the essential of the biodiversity protection, as well as the management of National Protected Areas conservation; which is the source for food and habitats of population, also aquatic animal – wildlife in order to conserve their abundances and sustainability, together with the country’s socio-economic development. Consequently, these are the main consideration that EDL-Gen take in order to contribute fund in the implementation of this project during the last 5 years.