Testing assumptions: the recent
history of forest cover in Nakai-Nam Theun National Protected Area, Khammouan
and Bolikhamxay Provinces
William G. Robichaud
Centre for Biodiversity Research
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC
CANADA
Abstract:
Nakai-Nam Theun National Protected Area (NNT NPA), in the Annamite Mountains of
central Laos, is the largest nature reserve in Laos or Vietnam. It has witnessed
a flurry of management planning in recent years, largely as precondition for the
World Bank's consideration of support for the nearby Nam Theun 2 dam. A pillar
of NNT's management planning - and which permeates most protected area planning
in Laos - has been that swidden agriculture is the principal threat to the
area's forest cover, and thus interventions in indigenous agricultural systems
the first priority of management. However, in NNT the magnitude of the swidden
'problem' is an untested assumption, since there has never been an analysis of
trends in forest cover in the reserve. This study attempted to fill that gap
using, as a first step, analyses of decades-long series of topographic maps and
Landsat satellite imagery.
Results show that there was probably a significant decline in forest cover in
NNT from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, but that in the last two decades
forest cover has been stable, and perhaps increased slightly. But even in the
earlier period of loss, the broad area over which local residents cleared fields
has not grown - what loss occurred was largely a process of infilling and
intensification within the boundaries of a forest/swidden mosaic, rather than
expansion outward into untrammeled areas of the reserve. Reasons for this
probably include cultural stability and conservatism, and argue for a more
conservative management approach.