Tram Chim National Park

There is a place in Đồng Tháp that the whole world is watching. That is not for the kind of beauty a city has. The world watches because the place is still alive.

Tràm Chim National Park lies in Tràm Chim commune, in Đồng Tháp Province, about 40 kilometers from the center of Cao Lãnh. According to the Ramsar Sites Information Service, it is Ramsar site number 2,000 in the world. It was designated on February 2, 2012, and it covers 7,313 hectares. When the world's 2,000th Ramsar wetland site falls here, it is no accident. Tràm Chim is one of the last remaining pieces of the Đồng Tháp Mười ecosystem, a region that once spread across about 700,000 hectares of the Mekong Delta.

This is not a zoo and not a park. It is an ecosystem that breathes, and it changes with the season, the water level and the weather.

Low, green tràm forest stands along the channels. The water reflects the leaves, and birdsong slips into every stretch of quiet. By the count of the Đồng Tháp tourism portal, nearly 130 plant species and more than 198 waterbird species live here. The park also supports nine bird species and five fish species that are threatened worldwide. In the dry season, it regularly holds more than 20,000 waterbirds.

Pink lotus, white lotus, lúa trời, năng kim. These are names worth remembering on any visit here. Lúa trời, also called lúa ma, is a species of wild rice plant. And Tràm Chim is one of the few places in the Mekong Delta that still keeps an intact community of it. Năng kim is a plant that matters more than many people think. It is the main food of the red-headed crane.

That brings us to the red-headed crane, and here the story has to be told straight. This bird is declining. In past decades, Tràm Chim held the largest flock of red-headed cranes in Vietnam. Over many years the numbers have fallen sharply, because of lost habitat, changes in the water regime and other pressures. The story has no ready happy ending, but it is being rewritten day by day.

According to the Đồng Tháp provincial portal, the national park has restored nearly 100 hectares of năng kim in its core zone over the last two years and more. In 2024, seven red-headed cranes returned. The number is not large, but it is a signal. It is a sign that when people change the way they step into nature, nature can begin to recover.

In a good season, with some luck, a visitor can see birds that a city never allows. The trích mồng đỏ skims low over the water. The diệc cao stands perfectly still on a bank of tràm trees, like a statue. The le le nhà often fly in flocks. Nobody can promise any of it. Nature is like that, and every visit is a different showing.

A viewing tower looks out over the wide green of the tràm forest, the channels and the flooded grassland. A seasonal wetland works to a rhythm that is very long, very even and very slow. The floodwater season runs from about September to December, and the dry season from about January to June. The red-headed cranes usually return between February and May, if the habitat suits them. Managing the water through the seasons is a key part of the restoration strategy the national park is carrying out.

Tràm Chim shows how a land can vanish completely or be kept. The difference between the two lies in very small decisions, made by a great many people across many generations. Wetland number 2,000 in the world is not proof of perfection. It is proof of effort.