The forest next to the city

I really enjoyed the feeling of the plane descending as it prepared to land at Tan Son Nhat Airport, looking out the window to admire the seemingly endless expanses of green below.

Those patches of natural greenery, combined with the winding flows of the rivers, are as beautiful as a watercolor painting, situated next to a bustling city in one of Vietnam's richest delta regions.

That is the Can Gio mangrove forest - a UNESCO - recognized biosphere reserve.

This is a key national ecological conservation area, or simply known as the Sac Forest by the people of Saigon.

The lush green areas of the Sac Forest, which have played an extremely important role since ancient times, have contributed to creating one of the most economically prosperous regions for many years, yet have never suffered the consequences of natural disasters. Indeed, Saigon, from its inception to the present day, has rarely faced tropical storms blowing in from the South or from the East Sea.

The Sac Forest provides shelter from storms, and moreover, this biosphere reserve acts like an air conditioner, quickly restoring the suffocating atmosphere of the city to a fresh state.

A striking feature of the Sac Forest is that a large portion of its area is separated by major rivers.

Due to its complete isolation from the mainland, the Sac Forest has formed a typical mangrove swamp ecosystem, relatively isolated from human life for centuries, and therefore unaffected by exploitation activities.

The Sac Forest has very special environmental conditions, being an intermediate ecosystem between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, freshwater and saltwater ecosystems. Because of these unique environmental factors, UNESCO recognized the Sac Forest as Vietnam's first Biosphere Reserve within the global network of Biosphere Reserves in 2000.

Heritage Magazine