Bac Lieu Bird Garden

A patch of mangrove forest lies between the streets and houses of a city, and hundreds of kinds of living things make their home in it.

This is Vườn chim Bạc Liêu, Bạc Liêu Bird Garden, and it is a strange thing to find. It is a reserve for species and their habitat, set right beside the urban area of the former city of Bạc Liêu. After the administrative reorganization of 2025, it belongs to Hiệp Thành ward in Cà Mau Province. The Vietnam News Agency once described it as the only reserve of its kind in the Mekong Delta that lies inside a city's built-up core. That it survives there at all is remarkable.

Its history begins in 1986. That year it was recognized by a decision of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, under the first name of Sân chim Bạc Liêu, the Bạc Liêu Bird Sanctuary. Nearly forty years later it is still here, and still part of the national system of nature reserves under the 2014 plan for special-use forests. Special-use forest is the class of forest that Vietnam keeps mainly for conservation and scientific research. A 2024 file from the Department of Nature Conservation and Biodiversity gives its legal area as 125.8 hectares. That area is divided into a strictly protected zone, a zone for ecological recovery, and a zone for administration and services.

What gives the garden its worth is not only birds. The forest has 184 plant species, including mangrove trees of the South such as chà là, cóc, tra and giá. Records from 2024 list 101 species of birds. They also list 96 species of freshwater and brackish-water fish. There are 21 species of reptiles, 16 of mammals and 8 of amphibians. To walk here is to pass through a web of trees, water, fish, insects and birds, and not only to watch cò in flight.

The typical birds are cò, quắm, vạc and diệc. Others are còng cọc, le le, điên điển and giang sen. Birds usually gather in large numbers in the rainy season, from May to October. They nest in the trees until about January, then leave, and come back at the start of the next rainy season. So the rainy season gives a better chance of seeing many of them. But these are wild birds, and they keep no tour schedule. On a clear day, with the air calm and the water at a moderate level, there are many. On a day of strong wind and disturbance, there are few. No one can promise a number.

The worth of this reserve does not lie in buildings or facilities. It lies in what has lasted nearly forty years. That is a patch of mangrove forest, alive in the middle of a city, where water birds still come to nest and to feed as they did before the city was formed. In 2024, the people who manage it had to keep a fire watch 24 hours a day through the whole dry season, to stop the forest from burning down. That is the real pressure the forest keepers carry.

On a rainy-season morning under the chà là and cóc trees, the water is still. Then, overhead, flocks of cò trắng glide in, their wings touching with a rustle like leaves. Giang sen stands upright among the sậy. A vạc folds its wings, slowly, down to a dark channel of water.