Environmental feel good story...Ho Chi Minh Trail area safe for wildlife

[tex-wyo-dem]

If only more of this could happen...

Ho Chi Minh Trail area safe for wildlife

By JERRY HARMER, Associated Press Writer
Sat Mar 3, 2:05 PM ET

KEO SEIMA, Cambodia - Four decades after U.S. warplanes plastered it with bombs, a remote corner of the old Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia is making a comeback as a treasure trove of endangered wildlife.

Tigers prowl imperiously down tracks where weapons-laden North Vietnamese trucks once rolled. Elephants shepherd their young past giant bomb craters to drink at jungle water holes, and rare apes call from treetops that used to hide communist forces from American pilots.

Much of the credit for this swords-into-plowshares story goes to the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, which has managed and protected this forest in southern Mondulkiri Province since 2002, in partnership with the Cambodian government. A former free-fire zone is now a strictly policed no-hunting preserve.

"It's quite moving, I guess," says Ed Pollard, the society's technical adviser, standing in the dappled light beneath a canopy deep inside the jungle.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070303/ap_on_re_as/war_zone_wildlife

[XemaSab]

1. I've heard similar things about the DMZ in Korea and the area around

Chernobyl.

The upside to war and nuclear horror, I guess. :shrug:

[tex-wyo-dem]

2. Possibly...certainly is symbolic...

rebirth from devastation.

It's stories like this that give me some hope.



(P.S. My 1000th post...:))

[XemaSab]

3. Congratulations!

:bounce: :party:

[kestrel91316]

4. My dad flew reconnaissance over the Ho Chi Minh trail during the war.

I remember he brought back declassified photos showing vast swaths of land where the foliage was all orange. They had sprayed with a defoliant to eliminate NVA cover for miles and miles. In retrospect I realize it must have been Agent Orange.

I also heard recently that barrels of a defoliant were unloaded at the base in Thailand in where he was stationed, and used to spray the perimeter of the base. My dad took up running that year (1968-9), and must have run around a lot near where Agent Orange was sprayed. He died of lung cancer at age 47 in 1980, quite possibly as a result of exposure to Agent Orange, though at that time I don't think anybody knew much about it.

So many people, both American and Vietnamese, were harmed so greatly by what we did there. I am glad to see that time has begun to heal the wounds, and nature can return to that beautiful place.