A great stride in cooperation between Vietnam forest rangers and the US Forest Service

The Forest Protection Department under MARD and the United States Forest Service co-hosted the workshop. 

In April 2019 the Forest Protection Department and the Forest Service of the United States Department of Agriculture signed a Letter of Intent on cooperation in the forestry sector. "Training rangers and advocate policies to address issues of illegal logging and wildlife hunting, illegal forest products trade" in is one of nine key cooperation contents.

Lenise Lago, Deputy Chief of the business office for the United States Forest Service, visited Vietnam in November 2019 and met with leaders of the Vietnam Administration of Forestry and the Forest Protection Department to incorporate the Letter of Intent by supporting the development of a law enforcement curriculum for Vietnam’s forest rangers.

Ms. Lago's visit created the groundwork for future collaboration between the two departments. It was also the beginning of a series of coordination activities between the two agencies to design training programs, including a field trip to evaluate the need for training at a number of forest ranger training universities, institutes, etc. in the North and South and at Cuc Phuong National Park.

In January 2020, there was a conference to evaluate the capacity and limitations of forest ranger training courses; in September 2020, there was a survey and evaluation of the training capacity of three ranger training facilities.

Mr. Nguyen Quoc Hieu, Deputy Director of the Forest Protection Department, said that the conference is an important advance in the collaboration between Vietnam’s forest rangers and the US Forest Service to provide consistent training in the area of law enforcement.

The two sides will coordinate from developing professional training plans for forest rangers to developing programs and documents; pilot professional training and capacity-building training; organize training courses to provide guidance on the implementation of legal documents in the forestry sector, thereby standardizing this training program nationwide.

At the workshop, the report on the survey and evaluation of demand for law enforcement training conducted during the survey team's two field excursions to the Central Area and the Central Highlands was unveiled. Participants were requested to contribute ideas to finalize the draft Memorandum of Understanding between the Forest Protection Department and the United States Forest Service.