Chu Mom Ray National Park

More than 97 percent of Chư Mom Ray National Park is still covered by forest. That one number is where its story begins.

It is the park's forest cover as of 2025, according to the Nhân Dân newspaper. Primary forest is shrinking across Vietnam and Southeast Asia. At a time like this, a protected area that still holds almost all of its forest is rare.

The park lies in the far north of the Central Highlands, in the Sa Thầy and Ngọc Hồi area. After the administrative reorganization of 2025, the area belongs to the new Quảng Ngãi Province.

The national park was founded on July 30, 2002, by Decision 103 of the Prime Minister. It was upgraded from the earlier Chư Mom Ray Nature Reserve. Two years later, in 2004, it was recognized as an ASEAN Heritage Park. That is a regional title. It confirms the value of the park's biodiversity well beyond the nation's own borders.

To see why Chư Mom Ray matters, it helps to look at a map. The park borders Virachey National Park in Cambodia and a protected area on the Laos side. Together they form one continuous stretch of protected forest across the borders. Conservationists call this kind of ecological corridor a "key" to keeping animal populations moving with the seasons across three countries. So the story of Chư Mom Ray is not the story of one forest alone. It is the story of a protected space that runs across borders.

The park has more than 56,000 hectares of protected forest. The area under its management is a little over 60,000 hectares. The land rises from about 200 meters in the low country to 1,773 meters at the highest peak. The forest comes in several kinds. On the high ground is subtropical humid evergreen forest. In the lowlands is khộp forest, typical of the Central Highlands, which drops its leaves in the dry season. There are also open grasslands, the favorite habitat of hoofed animals.

Among plants, the park's own records list 1,895 species of higher vascular plants. They belong to 541 genera, 184 families and 63 orders. Of these plants, 48 species are in the Vietnam Red Book. Another 20 are in the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The numbers are not there to be memorized. What they show is that Chư Mom Ray is one of the most important stores of plant genes in the Central Highlands and across Southeast Asia.

A plan for ecotourism from 2021 to 2030 names three priority places. The first is the Biodiversity Conservation and Ecotourism Center in Ba Gốc village. The second is the khộp forest of Đăk Kan. The third is the Ya Book Safari.

The Conservation Center is the most fitting place to begin. It is a center for environmental education, and it also receives and rescues rare wild animals. From there, the story of the park's ecosystem opens up before the eyes of a visitor.

The khộp forest of Đăk Kan shows one kind of forest typical of the Central Highlands. The trees drop their leaves in the dry season, the canopy is open and airy, the soil is mixed with sand, and light reaches the ground. This kind of forest makes a habitat for many hoofed animals and carnivores.

The waterfall that draws the most visitors is Thác Bảy Tầng, whose name means Seven Tiers. According to the Gia Lai newspaper, it has seven tiers of rock stacked in steps and is more than 100 meters high. It lies at the end of a walk through old forest, and the sound of falling water comes from far off before the waterfall itself comes into view.

Ba Gốc and Le are two villages in the buffer zone that welcome community tourism. Their culture is tied to the Gia Rai and the Rơ Măm. The Gia Rai are one of the peoples of Vietnam's Central Highlands. These communities have lived close to the forest for many generations. They keep the fire, keep the stories, and keep their own way of understanding nature.

Chư Mom Ray is not a place for visitors in a hurry. In the khộp forest, before the mist has lifted, light filters through the thin canopy. Only then does it make sense that this stretch of forest, after all its ups and downs, is still almost whole today.