Hanging around

I don’t like to see wild animals in cages but most of the residents of the Endangered Primate Rescue Centre can’t be released back into the wild. Many have been rescued from the illegal trade in wildlife that sees animals captured across South East Asia and sent to China as pets or for their body parts to be used in various Chinese medicine. One of the species only found in Vietnam has just 70 animals left. I think this one is a grey shanked douc there are around 1000 of them left in the wild. Not all of the primates are in cages. The centre has two ‘semi wild’ areas where the primates that they hope to release live in large areas of forest protected by an electric fence and monitored to see whether they are able to fend for themselves. I got a glimpse of several animals in one of the semi wild areas but they were hiding in the treetops so impossible to photograph.

The centre is in the Cuc Phuong National Park. I took a bus to the nearest town and then was picked up by motorbike by the owner of the guest house I was staying at. I walked up to the park in the afternoon and also went to their turtle rescue centre. See the extra for one turtle centre’s residents.

I’m happy to know that Vietnam does have some wildlife left. When I lived here I spent most of my time in a city where the only wildlife was rats, I’m not sure there were even any pigeons in Saigon! And when I travelled around, all the landscape I saw was agricultural rather than natural habitats.