In Buon Ma Thuot city, Dak Lak provincial People's Committee (PPC) in coordination with Mondulkiri province - Kingdom of Cambodia held a conference on strengthening transboundary cooperation in forest protection and biodiversity conservation at the cross-border area between Dak Lak (Vietnam) and Mondulkiri (Cambodia) on January 29th. The conference was chaired by Mrs. H'Yim Kdoh - Vice Chairwoman of the PPC and Mr. Cheung Sochantha - Deputy Governor of Mondulkiri province. Over 40 delegates from Departments and sectors, Management Boards of National Parks, nature reserves, and wildlife sanctuary organizations in the two provinces attended the conference.

Delegates attend the conference

According to Mondulkiri’s draft proposal, the two provinces agreed to focus on five specific actions. Firstly, the two provinces will strengthen propaganda and integrate subjects of transboundary conservation cooperation related to protection of timber and wildlife trade across border into regular meetings. Secondly, both provinces will establish effective information sharing mechanism for supporting forest management and protection; focusing on the information exchange between two Management Boards of Serepok Wildlife Sanctuary (Mondulkiri province) and Yok Don National Park (Dak Lak province). In addition, the two sides will organize regular meetings twice a year to share experiences and improve the coordination between the two sides in the wildlife management and conservation. Simultaneously, each province will appoint its own focal person for regular communication and sharing information. And lastly, all forest protectors of Serepok Wildlife Sanctuary and Yok Don National Park will be trained on equal skill level such as law enforcement, intelligent patrolling, forest management, and biodiversity monitoring and research.

In order to effectively cooperate in the next time, the delegates at the conference spent time re-evaluating the current situation of natural resources, the risk of forest resource infiltration, plans on natural resources conservation and protection, ecotourism development in combination with natural resources conservation in the border region, necessary infrastructure for signing agreement, changing the mode of communication in the border region, and application of biodiversity management software for forest protectors.

Mrs. H'Yim Kdoh - Vice Chairwoman of Dak Lak PPC speaks at the conference

Speaking at the conference, Mrs. H'Yim Kdoh –Vice Chairwoman of the PPC highly appreciated the interest of the authorities of the two countries in preventing natural resources crime in the border region, contributing to the nature resourses conservation and sustainable economic development along the border in the context of resource depletion. The Vice Chairwoman hoped that the two sides would soon sign the memorandum of understanding and develop a more detailed and practical action plans in order to improve the effectiveness of law enforcement in the border area.

Photo session

At the end of the conference, the delegation of Mondulkiri Province made a field visit to Yok Don National Park and discussed some concrete solutions on January 30th.