Flora & Fauna of Vietnam
Posted By tourar on December 9, 2009
Situated on the eastern margin of the Indochinese peninsula, Vietnam borders the Gulf of Thailand, Gulf of Tonkin and South China Sea. Other contries located near Vietnamn include Laos, China and Cambodia, the country is a part of the Mekong delta region.
The vietnames highlands are densely forested and the lowlands are humid and hot, both areas are home to a large number of different plants and animals. Since the process of cataloguing the Vietnamese wildlife is still in its infancy new species are added on a regular basis. In addition to iconic mammal species like the two newly described species of Muntjac deer, there are also over 800 species of wood, 100 species of amphibians and over 150 species of reptiles to be found in this comparatively small nation, and the recorded number of plant species in the country surpasses 2,000. Click here if you want to read more about the tropical flowers of the country.
Vietnam is located in a spot where various atmospheric currents converge and has therefore received plenty of airborne seeds from the north, west and south, so the monkeys, gibbons and langurs found in the dense limestone forests can certainly feast on a multitude of fruits and berries. One of only four previously unknown large land animals to be discovered during the 20th century is native to Vietnam a wild ox that belongs to an entirely new genus. Two new species of muntjac deer has as earlier mentioned been discribed in Vietnam recently, both of the new species was founf in the same nature preserve, the Vu Quang nature reserve.
Vu Quang is located in a remote densely forested part of Vietnam in the Ha Tin province which is located on the north central coast. The area is well known for its steep mountains and dense rainforest and history buffs might know this as the base for the Phan Dinh Phung, the Vietnamese revolutionary army that fought the french colonial forces for independance during the late 1800s. The mountains in the preserve capture air from the South Chinese sea and is therefore very hot and humid. The rainy season offers continuous rain rather than separated thunder storms and the dry season can hardly be described as dry in a conventional sense of the word since there is such an abundance of fog. Traversing the Nature Reserve is difficult since virtually all surfaces are wet, slippery and covered in algae. Not even local hunters like to enter the forest.
A more accessible element of the Vietnamese geography is the spectacular 30 meter long Ban Gioc Waterfall the 4th highest waterfall in the world along a national border. this spectacular waterfall separates the Guangxi Province in China from the Cao Bang province in Vietnam and is located approximately 272 km north of Hanoi. The border is marked out by a stone tablet that has been placed at the top of the fall and engraved in French and Chinese.
Close to the waterfall you can explore the Tongling Gorge but only if you’re willing to access it trough a cavern from an adjoining gorge since this is the only entry point. (A gorge is a deep valley between cliffs, typically carved out of the landscape by a river.) The isolated Tongling Gorge is home to a high degree of endemic plants that can be found nowhere else in the world. This Gorge is said to contain treasure and it is said that locals have fond treasures in it in the past, this is due to the fact that it used to be a hiding place for bandits.
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