This program empowers local ethnic (Tai, H'mong, Dao) communities' direct involvement in conservation of the endangered Francois Langur (leaf monkey) and its habitat in northern Vietnam, by establishing the first community-based conservation area in Vietnam. Villagers are involved in conservation management and monitoring of the langur and other species in the landscape. The program provides training, mentoring, and technical and financial support, including livelihood development activities.
People from outside the local communities are coming into the area to hunt the Francois Langur, to market its body parts as medicinal products. The local communities want to protect the langur and its habitat and by doing so protecting also other species in the landscape.
The project is establishing a community-based conservation management approach in the landscape, where local communities from 19 villages are direct stakeholder in conservation of the firsts and biodiversity therein. Areas in the landscape, selected by communities themselves and outside critical langur conservation zones, remain form multiply-use purposes where villagers harvest non-timber forest products.
A system where direct stakeholder communities become stewardships of their environmental surroundings and natural resources, thus creating a direct interest in their conservation by creating a sense of ownership to lands and natural values previously considered common and exploitable by all.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
