Kon Chu Rang Nature Reserve

In the northeast of Gia Lai, not far from Kon Ka Kinh National Park, there lies a forest. It is the Kon Chư Răng Nature Reserve. Fewer people know it than know its neighbor, but it is no less precious.

The reserve lies entirely within Sơn Lang commune, in Kbang. It covers more than 15,526 hectares. According to figures published by the reserve's management board, forest covers over 98 percent of the land. More than 60 percent of that is rich forest and old-growth forest. In the Central Highlands, few places still keep so much natural forest nearly whole.

One title matters here. In 2021, UNESCO recognized the Kon Hà Nừng Plateau Biosphere Reserve. A biosphere reserve is a UNESCO-recognized area where nature is protected and the people living there keep working the land. Kon Chư Răng is its core zone. That means the part with the strictest protection, where outside influence is smallest.

The management board records 1,602 species of plants and animals, along with 66 species of microfungi. Among the mammals are rare ones, such as the giant muntjac, the yellow-cheeked gibbon and the gray-shanked douc langur. They live deep in the forest and seldom show themselves. That is the sign that the forest is still quiet enough to shelter them.

Kon Chư Răng sits at the headwaters of the Kôn River. Streams such as the Đá and the Đắc Phan wind through its old trees. Their water flows down to the lowlands and feeds the wide land below. So the forest is more than a home for birds and animals. It is the source of a whole region of rivers.

The landscape that draws the most visitors today is the K50 Waterfall, also called the Hang Én Waterfall. Local sources differ on its height: nearly 50 meters in some, about 50 to 54 meters in others. The exact figure matters less than standing at its foot. A band of white water drops from the rock wall. The roar of the fall rings through the old forest, and spray cools the air all around.

The name Hang Én, according to the Sơn Lang commune authorities, comes from the cave behind the fall. Hang means cave, and én means swallow. A flock of swallows lives in that cave and wheels through the air. Each afternoon, dark streaks of swallows draw arcs between the white curtain of water and the mossy green cliff.

On an April morning at the foot of K50, spray is cold on the face. The sound of the fall echoes among forest canopy hundreds of years old. High above, the swallows trace their curves across the air. No photograph can hold all of it.