Four workshops and secure nearly one hundred confiscated pangolins

We apology if you found you missed our last monthly newsletter. SVW teams have been very busy to organise four workshops and lots of other activities in September which we had to delay our August newsletter.

Here you can find down more  what we have done in the last two months such as organising four workshops, rescuing 74 new pangolins, releasing 19 pangolins, preparing for new school wildlife education programs, combatting illegal poaching of Anti-poaching team and our other activities.

Nearly 90 pangolins were saved by Hanoi Wildlife Rescue Centre and SVW!

Still remember the first cooperation between SVW and Hanoi Wildlife Rescue Center (HWRC) in 2016 that brought the survival rate for rescued pangolins at HWRC for the first time?

Since then, we continue to support HWRC to rescue and rehabilitate hundreds of pangolin resulting in over 100 pangolins being released back into the wild. This is a major contribution to the conservation of wild pangolin in Vietnam.

Last month, SVW sent two veterinarians and two animal keepers supporting HWRC to take care of over 90 pangolins. After 1 week, 73 pangolins were transferred to SVW, while one of our keepers is continuing to stay to take care of other 15 pangolins. Supporting food and working with staff at HWRC to take care of pangolins is the best way to transfer our knowledge to improve pangolin husbandry at this centre.

Pu Mat National Park now has a capacity to rescue and rehabilitate pangolins

It’s such a good news that Vietnam has more rescue centers that able to rescue and rehabilitate confiscated pangolins!

SVW has transferred 12 Sunda pangolins to the Wildlife Rescue Center at Pu Mat National Park (PMNP). We sent a vet and an experienced keeper to work along with and build capacity for local keepers there. Those pangolins will be rehabilitated at the center and then released into the wild.

Strengthen law enforcement in combating illegal hunting and trading in and around Pu Mat National Park

From 18 to 20 September, SVW in cooperation with Pu Mat National Park (PMNP) successfully organized three law enforcement workshops in three districts Tuong Duong, Anh Son and Con Cuong, Nghe An Province. 275 participants including leaders and officials from District People Committee, law enforcement officers, and delegates from relevant departments attended the workshops and discussed key issues related to illegal hunting and trading prevention, forest protection patrols, and plans for dealing with law violations; raising awareness and developing economic solutions for the local people to reduce pressure on the forest.

Three conclusion remarks from three workshops were signed by representatives of districts and distributed to all participants and other stakeholders around PMNP. It will help us to follow up with all actions to combat illegal hunting and trading in and around PMNP that were listed from results of workshops.

Urgent Conservation Plan for Pangolin Species in Vietnam

Over 50 delegates who are officials from Police stations, Ranger stations, National Park and NGOs attended this workshop.

This workshop is considered as an urgent need to have a National Pangolin Conservation Action Plan in saving existed pangolin populations and to combat illegal pangolin trade and to reduce pangolin demand in the country. As the results, a draft of the content of action plan was agreed.

This workshop was organised by Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, with technical and financial support from SVW, and financial support from Humane Society International.

Helping pangolin conservation in HongKong

On 5th , Mr. Thai Nguyen Van, SVW director has made a speech at the workshop "Wildlife and Traditional Chinese Medicine: Can we help save the Pangolin?" which was organised by WildAid. His speech focused on helping people understand the challenges of keeping pangolins in captivities and why we should not try to breed pangolins for commercial purposes. Hopefully it will help raise awareness about pangolin farming issues. 
On following day, Mr Thai shared a pangolin research with around 40 researchers and conservationists from HongKong government, which aims to help pangolin conservation activities in HongKong. 

A tourist company and their visitors got involved in supporting our conservation work

Haydi Tour, a tourism company, conducted a tour on experiencing nature at Cuc Phuong National Park - "Haydi Cuc Phuong – Travel to love". They chose our Carnivore and Pangolin Education Centre and our unreleasable animals as their main activities to inspire their visitors to protect Vietnam’s wildlife. A part of their profit was donated to our rescue work, particularly to buy food for our rescued animals.

This is just a start. More will come in the future! Follow us to see how this will progress.

Everyone can be a fundraiser

A 7 year-old girl named Betty raised $300 for us through her birthday party. Her family and she visited our rescue center in 12th Aug 2018.  Betty with her brother had an evening accompanying with our keepers to prepare food and feed the pangolins. Ms. Huong Dao, our Education Outreach Officer, guided their visit to our Education Center and our long-term wild residents. They loved their time at our center so much that their family decided to donate more with $200.

Future for Nature “visited” and spread out our messages

We welcomed Ruben Hoekstra, who writes articles and make videos for Future For Nature  -Academy - a student foundation related to Future for Nature Award. During his five-week volunteering time here, he made one video about our work and Mr. Thai, FFN winner in 2016, and one video about our keepers, as well as several great photos of the our animals.

His articles and video can be found at Future for Nature-Report.

People love freedom, so do the pangolins!

19 Sunda pangolins found their way back home

On September 16, 2018, Save Vietnam's Wildlife and Cuc Phuong National Park released 19 Sunda pangolin back into their natural habitat. These individuals were confiscated from various illegal trades.

Since the beginning of 2018, we have released 176 pangolins back to the wild.

But sadly,

Chinese pangolin is becoming rarer

Save Vietnam's Wildlife rescued an individual Chinese pangolin (Manis pentadactyla) from Kim Boi district, Hoa Binh province on September 14, 2018. Out of thousand cases, there are only few individuals of Chinese pangolins confiscated from illegal trades. Unfortunately, this animal was missing one leg because of a hunter’s snare trap and was in poor health condition. This individual died after few days at the center regardless our intensive treatment.

All SVW staff are doing their best for a better future of wildlife

Valuing Nature in Childhood Program starts its third year

Our educational program for 5-year-old children has entered its 3rd year of running. The preparation stage is almost completed and ready to welcome this year’s participants. Scheduled time is in mid-October.

There will be various minor changes in this year’s program, including: more activities to  increase the interactions between teachers, parents and students, additional educational publications for students, more developed promotional campaigns to spread the message of the program, plan for new policy to welcome 5-year-olds from other places to apply for the program in the future.

A new conservation education program for children aged 8-10

An education program for children aged 8-10 is in the process of finalizing the content and scheduling for a trial run in November. The agenda and its content are built based on the curriculum of the Science, Natural and Social books - class 3-4-5, in order to combine school knowledge with nature exploring activities. The program will help children apply the information they learned at school to the outdoor world, help them to understand deeper and memorize longer, which will eventually leads to our ultimate goal of cultivating their love for wildlife and orienting them to be friendlier with nature.

On the other hand, this program will open new doors for nature educational outdoor program to connect with school’s main curriculum for various ages.

Stay tuned for more of our future progress!

The Education Team spent time in the forest to practically create a suitable experience program for 8 to 10-year-old children.

Publishing the result of local community living in and around Pu Mat national park research

Our community team has been analyzing data of our social research over the last few months. One of the result shows 88.6% of surveyed households (out of total 1,364 households) said the reason why they still went to Pu Mat National Park to hunt and snare wildlife is because they have to earn their livelihoods as hunters. Other reasons arisen from the market demand, family and the village’s tradition - mistaken as their rights to exploit forest’s resources, and low understanding towards nature resources as well as conservation laws. More interesting finding are coming. Please stay tuned for our official technical report of this research.

More wildlife traps and camps destroyed around Pu Mat national park

In the third and fourth month of patrolling, our anti-poaching team found and destroyed 393 traps, 112 camps and encounter 58 people entered the forest to exploit forest resources. They found some camps built near each other form as a small village, which proved that local people have been entering the forest frequently and they sometimes go in groups. We continuously carry on field research throughout the year.

The summary of report of Anti-poaching activities are below.

5 tracked pangolins are still in our sight

Our field team continue to monitor five pangolins that we released recently with transmitter. Three pangolins are always monitored and we have information about their sleeping locations, as well as their habitat use and home ranges. The remaining two individuals may have moved beyond our regular surveyed area. Cheering to the pangolins and our field team!

More animals’ images will be captured in our cameras

Tan, our field researcher, has been setting up camera-traps in Pu Mat National Park with IZW, at 120 camera-trap locations. We are camera-trapping the whole Pu Mat National Park: the distance between each camera-trap site is 2.5 km. The group has completed 50% of the workload. As the head of one of the three groups, Tan completed 22 camera trap locations in the Khe Choeng area and Thac Kem area. Well done, Tan!

Effort to bring back a healthy wild population for otters

Dung, our Field Manager, and Daniel, our Science Advisor, attended the South-east Asian Otter Conservation Planning Meeting from 9th to 12th September 2018 in Singapore.

The IUCN Otter Specialist Group discussion is to to build the necessary objectives for otter conservation in South-east Asia. Huge thanks to the IUCN Otter Specialist Group and Wildlife Reserves Singapore for supporting our participation at the workshop.

Left: Group photo of all attendees at the meeting

Right: Dan and Smooth-coated Otters, Singapore, September 2018

Many new SVWers!

In this month, we warmly welcome Linh and Nhu, two graphic designer; Trinh and Hanh, two education outreach intern, and Dung, an animal keeper to SVW’s family! For more details, please visit Our Team site.

Ms. Linh Do My started from 7 Sep 2018 – Design Officer (3D and graphic design)

Linh graduated Hanoi Law University in 2016 and then graduated FPT Arena Multimedia in 2017. Linh has been active in wildlife conservation since 2015 by taking part in various organizations, groups and by her personal projects on raising wildlife awareness. Linh has joined SVW since September 2018 with a high hope to contribute more to wildlife conservation using her abilities.

Ms. Nhu Nguyen Ngoc started from 10 Sep 2018 – Design Officer (graphic design and video editing)

Graduated from University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Nhu always has a major interest in social, educational and environmental issues. Save Vietnam's Wildlife is the next chapter of her journey to contribute to a cause she deeply care and passionate about. She believes in the power of media and education to change people's behaviors towards wildife and their habitat.

Ms. Trinh Nguyen Thi Ngoc started from 12 Sep 2018 – Education Outreach Intern

Trinh graduated from HCMC Economic College since 2012. After a long time to work in economic field, she realized her passion for nature and environmental education, so she decided to participate in education programs for school children with a hope to contribute in creating a future generation who love and care for wildlife. 

Ms. Hanh Dang My started from 10 Sep 2018 - Education Outreach Intern

Hanh graduated from the Vietnam National University of Forestry majoring in Natural Resources Management. Together with Tring, Hanh joined our team to carry out two school programs in this school year. Hanh strongly believes that education is one of the most important keys to natural resources management.

Mr. Dung Tran Tuan started from 24 Sep 2018 – Animal Keeper (Wildlife Rescue Centre in Pu Mat National Park)

Dung was born and raised in Nghe An Province. He graduated from the major of Forest protection and management of University of Economic Nghe An. Before joining SVW, Dung had over 3 years working as a security guide at Pu Mat National Park. At the moment, Dung is going through an intense training program at our rescue cente in Cuc Phuong National Park to learn more about our focal species, how to take care wild animals and other husbandry and management skills to support his job in future.

Say goodbye!

Ms. Thao Dang Thi Thu is no longer working with SVW as a Fundraising Manager. She has joined SVW for over a year and successfully raised funds for SVW. She got a sponsor from Vingoup who donated a 29-seated bus for education programs and also used on rescue trips. We deeply appreciate her contribution to SVW and wish her a successful career wherever she goes.

Ms. Linh Vu Thi Thuy completed her internship at SVW in September. She was an excellent intern who worked with us on the Valuing Nature in childhood program for 10 months. Let’s send her a huge thank-you for her contribution to SVW’s success and best wishes to her future.

Thanks to Thao and Linh for being a part of SVW!

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