UTILIZING SMART TOOLS FOR BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION ENHANCEMENT AT TA DUNG NATIONAL PARK

Ta Dung National Park was changed from Ta Dung Nature Reserve by Decision No. 185/QD-TTg dated February 8, 2018 by the Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. With a total of 20,000 hectares, located in the Central Highlands, characterized by subtropical evergreen moist monsoon closed forest on lowland, Ta Dung hosts many ecosystems of the Highlands with high biodiversity value, including wildlife listed in the IUCN Red List and the Vietnam Red Data Book. As one of the high-priority conservation areas, Ta Dung National Park has been focusing on enhancing the effectiveness of forest management, protection, and biodiversity conservation, especially improving the capacity of technical staff and forest rangers which was perpetually carried out by the Park.

To enhance the capacity of staff and the effectiveness of conservation activities, in June 2024, Center for Nature Conservation and Development (CCD) cooperated with Ta Dung National Park to organize the “Data Management and Patrol Reporting Training Program with SMART” for over 30 staff members from various departments, five ranger stations and mobile teams. The training introduced Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tools (SMART) and gave participants practices in building data models; establishing patrol activities; data collection, entry and management; and compiling comprehensive reports. The training covered and pragmatically applied SMART Desktop and SMART Mobile, thus standardizing the toolkit for patrolling, management, study, and monitoring biodiversity in Ta Dung National Park.

In the coming period, CCD will continue to cooperate with Ta Dung National Park to support updating models, fixing errors, completing information collection forms and report templates from the SMART system. CCD has also been supporting many national parks, nature reserves, and protective forest management boards across the country in building and standardizing management systems using SMART tools to improve accuracy and effectiveness in management, patrolling, forest protection, forest monitoring, and sustainable biodiversity conservation activities.