Lung Ngoc Hoang Nature Reserve

Long ago, people called this land Lung Ông Trời. The name meant a marsh that belonged to Heaven, and to no one else at all.

The name sounds plain, but every word in it carries a piece of the land. In the speech of southern Vietnam, a lung is low, flooded land. Its close relatives are the bưng and the búng. Another is the trấp. But a lung is usually deeper, and it holds water in every season. Ngọc Hoàng, the Jade Emperor, is the highest god in East Asian folk belief. Vietnamese people simply call him Ông Trời, Heaven. Local oral tradition says the land was so wild and so rich in what it yielded that only Heaven could own it. Giant fish, big snakes and otters filled the marsh. Ordinary people did not dare to go near.

Today that land is the Lung Ngọc Hoàng Nature Reserve. It covers 2,805 hectares and is one of the most important wetland reserves in the Mekong Delta.

Before 1975, this was wild cajuput forest. It was a storehouse of fish and snakes for the region west of the Hậu River. After 1975, the land became the Phương Ninh Forestry Enterprise, which harvested cajuput wood and aquatic produce. In 1999, the late Prime Minister Võ Văn Kiệt flew over this land and saw its great ecological value. He had already left office by then. A year later, he came in person to visit the marsh. He urged the province to set up a reserve. In 2002, a government decision founded the Lung Ngọc Hoàng Wetland Nature Reserve. Deputy Prime Minister Nguyễn Công Tạn signed it on January 14 of that year.

The reserve is one of the policy legacies of Võ Văn Kiệt. Others include a canal named after him, which drains acid water from the soils of An Giang, and many major decisions for the Mekong Delta.

The reserve is divided into three zones. The strictly protected zone covers about 1,000 hectares. It is the heart of the reserve, and visitors may not go in on their own. Hairy-nosed otters live there, along with box turtles, cobras and many species of rare birds. The ecological restoration zone covers more than 900 hectares. There, the cajuput forest that had declined is being brought back. The administrative and service zone is where visitors are welcomed.

Across the whole reserve, more than 330 plant species have been recorded. So have 206 animal species. Many of them appear in the Vietnam Red Data Book and on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

But the most remarkable resident is not a number. It is one particular crocodile.

In 1985, forest rangers brought a small freshwater crocodile here. At the time it weighed only about 30 kilograms. Forty years went by. The reserve did not yet exist, then it did, then it grew. And the crocodile stayed. Today it is three and a half meters long and weighs more than 200 kilograms. The reserve keeps three freshwater crocodiles in enclosures, and the old one is among them.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the freshwater crocodile as Critically Endangered. In the wild, it is close to extinct in the Mekong Delta.

A motorboat heading deep into the cajuput forest passes Lung Sen, the reserve's natural lotus marsh. In season, the lotus plants rise above the water. Next comes Lung Trăn, Python Marsh. Local oral tradition says that giant pythons once lived there, and the name of the place keeps that story. Pythons still live in the cajuput forest today, but they are much smaller. This is folk legend, though, and no scientific study has confirmed any giant python.

The best time for watching birds is the morning, from seven to nine o'clock. More than 70 bird species have been recorded here. Among them are Asian openbills, painted storks and milky storks.

In the farmers' experience area, inside the administrative and service zone, visitors can try lifting a vó and setting a lờ. A vó is a net tied at its four corners to bamboo poles. It is lowered into the water, then pulled up. A lờ is a tube of woven bamboo with a one-way door that lets fish in but not out. These two tools are part of the memory of Mekong Delta farmers. Fewer and fewer people still know how to use them.

The reserve lies in Phương Bình commune. The commune was once part of Hậu Giang province and now belongs to the city of Cần Thơ.

The reserve is smaller than the national parks of U Minh Thượng and U Minh Hạ. But it sits in the middle of the delta, and it forms an important corridor for biodiversity across the whole region.

Early in the morning, while mist still lies on the marsh, the calls of birds and egrets ring out from the cajuput forest. A boat glides past Lung Sen, where the lotus rises through the thick green weed on the water. In its enclosure, the old crocodile that has lived here for forty years lies still, as if this were still the time when Lung Ông Trời had no name on any map.