LookAtVietnam – Bird sanctuaries and stork gardens throughout the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta have lost thousands of birds each year to poachers due to lax regulations.

Arrested development: Cormorants are caught in a net by a poacher.

Ca Mau Province alone has about 20 bird sanctuaries and stork gardens covering an area of 300ha, housing more than 60 bird species.

The poachers, who sell the birds for meat or pets, catch them by poisoning their cooking, setting traps or nets, or using decoys. The birds are often caught in rice fields while they search for food.

Vo Van Phu, head of the Thot Not District’s Culture and Sports Office, said poaching had been occurring at the Bang Lang Stork Garden for a long time, but local authorities had not been able to prevent it because there were no regulations protecting birds not listed in the International Union Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.

“We can only persuade these people to stop poaching,” Phu said.

Nguyen Ngoc Thuyen, caretaker of the stork garden in Can Tho City’s Thot Not district, said dozens of thousands of storks at the garden die each year from food poisoning or injuries sustained from traps.

Mother storks often take the poisoned food to their babies.

“I save dozens of injured birds every week,” said Thuyen, a former owner of the garden, which was set up in 1983. “The number of storks living at the garden has declined over the past two years.”

The 3.4ha stork garden, one of the largest in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta, is home to more than 600,000 storks and other birds of about 20 species, including ibis, egret and little herons, little cormorants, pelicans, buntings and moorhens.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News