Season 02 Episode 01
Synopsis
Cat Tien is one of Vietnam’s most biologically diverse and largest national parks. It is home to 40 critically endangered wildlife which faces severe exploitation by professional poaching gangs, including its vulnerable remaining pangolin population.
Lam and Julong are anti-poaching officers from NGO Save Vietnam’s Wildlife. Together with the government’s forest rangers, they form a forest protection team to fight against the threats posed by poaching to the wildlife. They face the risk of possible violent confrontation with armed poachers and the danger of the unpredictable elements of the forest.
We join our defenders on a journey into the heart of Cat Tien to save its pangolins and other wildlife from the threat of extinction.
Anti-poaching officer Le Thi Ngoc Lam from NGO Save Vietnam’s Wildlife (SVW) looks for traces of the remaining pangolins in Cat Tien National Park.
She and SVW’s research team work together to protect the world’s most trafficked mammal from the threats of poaching.
Having inherited a sacred relationship with the forest from his indigenous K’ho culture, anti-poaching officer, Soh Ao Julong from NGO Save Vietnam’s Wildlife pays tribute to the forest of Cat Tien National Park through his work protecting its wildlife.
Anti-poaching officers Lam and Julong of NGO Save Vietnam’s Wildlife assist Cat Tien’s government forest rangers on a patrol. Due to a lack of public financial, technological and human resources, the NGO collaborates with the government’s protection force to counter threats to the national park.
Government forest ranger Le Van Tan shows anti-poaching officer Soh Ao Julong from NGO Save Vietnam’s Wildlife the marks of a pangolin’s claws on a tree. Those innocent footprints attract poachers, making the pangolins easy targets in the forest.
Cheap and homemade snares are omnipresent in Cat Tien National Park. In the last five years, local poaching gangs have illegally hunted over a thousand animals every year.
Government forest rangers Le Van Tan and Chiu Van Hai are on a river patrol. They track down illegal fishing boats and residents who help poachers cross the Dong Nai River to enter the protected forest of Cat Tien National Park.
A boat sits docked in Nui Tuong, an area within Cat Tien National Park where anti-poaching officers were attacked by wildlife poachers on March 1st 2023.
Veterinarian Truong Ngoc Anh (left) carries out a health check on a rescued pangolin with the help of volunteer at Save Vietnam’s Wildlife’s Pangolin Rescue and Rehabilitation Center in Cuc Phuong National Park.
After being confiscated from poachers, traffickers or sellers, rescued pangolins are handed over to Save Vietnam’s Wildlife by the police. Most of them suffer from severe injuries that demand a careful and costly rehabilitation process.
Guava Crape Myrtle with hollows is the pangolin's ideal place to live. After choosing suitable sites, Save Vietnam’s Wildlife conducts a secretive and highly vigilant plan to re-release the rescued pangolins back into their natural habitat, to minimise their chance of being poached again.
A baby pangolin is gently moved from the mother that will be examined by a veterinarian at Save Vietnam’s Wildlife’s Pangolin Rescue and Rehabilitation Center in Cuc Phuong National Park. The mother pangolin was four months pregnant with the baby pangolin when it was rescued from a poacher’s trap and brought to the center.
A male Javan pangolin which lost its two feet after being trapped twice in poachers’ snares was rescued and is rehabilitating well at Save Vietnam’s Wildlife’s Pangolin Rescue and Rehabilitation Center in Cuc Phuong National Park. It is now the heaviest male Javan pangolin at the center.
