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From: Nguyet Nguyen
Date: Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 8:31 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear list,
A prof. asked me how much of the 3-layer forests in Viet Nam was
destroyed by US bombs and defoliants, and I couldn't give an exact #.
I know that a large area of such forests in U Minh Thuong was left
intact, but I am clueless otherwise.
Can you help me with a number and sources, please?
Many thanks!
Nguyet
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From: Diane Fox
Date: Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 6:21 AM
According to US military records, 24% of the upland forests, and 1/3-1/2 of the saltwater mangroves were decimated. See, for example, Guenter Lewy, 1978, America in Vietnam, from Oxford University Press. These are the typical, conservative figures given, though there are other estimates. The 24% is a composite, of course, meaning that some areas were untouched, and others devastated. For example, near the DMZ, 50% of the forests in some provinces were destroyed.
Diane
Anthropology and History
College of the Holy Cross
1 College Street
Worcester, Ma 10610
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From: Nguyet Nguyen <nn9606a@student.american.edu>
Date: Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 7:32 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thanks so much, Diane! I think I've heard of a bigger percentage.
I wonder if you could suggest anybody whom I can ask for other
sources? It would be much appreciated.
Best wishes,
Nguyet
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From: Susan Hammond
Date: Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 2:27 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
It is hard to know for sure how much was destroyed as the records are mainly for the amount of area sprayed. According to Arthur Westing dense inland forests amounted to about 5.8 million hectares in southern Vietnam during the war years and about 1.1 million hectares of dense inland forest was sprayed at least once. However, not all sprayed areas were destroyed as the defoliation would only last a season on some species. But in areas where there was multiple sprayings that killed the trees, or where there was other methods of deforestation (bombing or Rome plows for instance) total deforestation occurred such as the areas the Diane points out in the DMZ and also along the Lao border. Westing estimates about 10 percent of the upland forest trees were killed from one spraying and about 34% of the trees sprayed were sprayed more than once. He estimates that 51,000 hectare of upland forest was ‘virtually obliterated’ by the spraying (sprayed 4 or more times) and estimates partial damaged (1 to 3 sprayings) to an additional 1.266,000 hectares.
Westing also estimates how much was damaged by bombing and uses a category of ‘upland forest’ and estimates that ‘crater obliterated forests’ by bombing accounts for 104,000 hectares of which 59,000 was ‘commercial forest’ and another 4.9 million hectares was hit with shrapnel that may or may have not caused death to the trees (2.8 million ha of commercial forest). He goes on to estimate that Rome plows accounts for 325,000 hectares but it is not clear what type of forest was destroyed this way. Westing does estimate that 184,000 ha was ‘commercial’ forest and notes that most of this Rome Plow destruction was in Military region III (mainly in Bien Hoa, Binh Duong and Tay Ninh).
Vo Quy may be the source of the higher estimates, in his testimony to congress a few years back (and in other talks he has given) he mentions that 2 million hectares of inland forest were ‘badly effected’ and estimates that there was 10.3 million hectares of forest in southern Vietnam before the war. But he does specify how much was inland and therefore more likely triple canopy forest. So if Westing’s estimate was right that there was 5.8 million hectares of inland forest and Vo Quy is correct that 2 million hectares of inland forest were ‘badly effected’ you would end up with more than 24% of inland forests potentially seriously damaged or destroyed.
Pam McElwee may have more accurate numbers from her research.
Susan
Westing, A. Herbicides in War: The Long-term Ecological and Human Consequences. London and Philadelphia: Taylor and Francis, 1984.
Westing, A. Ecological Consequences of the Second Indochina War. SIPRI, 1976
Vo Quy: http://www.internationalrelations.house.gov/111/quy060409.pdf
Susan Hammond
Director
War Legacies Project
144 Lower Bartonsville Rd
Chester, VT 05143
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From: Judith Henchy
Date: Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 3:33 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Nguyet,
This dissertation is available online, if you have access to the ProQuest dissertation database:
When the forest became the enemy and the legacy of American herbicidal warfare in Vietnam /
Thi Phuong-Lan Bui
2003
English Book : Thesis/dissertation/manuscript Archival Material vi, 6, 296 leaves ; 29 cm.
It may be useful.
Best
Judith
Judith Henchy
Head, Southeast Asia Section and Special Assistant
to the Dean of University Libraries for International Programs
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From: David Brown
Date: Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 7:58 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
susan, until pam checks in at least, i'm taking your data as the gold standard. it accords perfectly with what i've heard, here and there, since way back when. thanks for taking the time to post.
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From: Nguyet Nguyen
Date: Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 9:27 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thank you everyone for your help. I really appreciated it. I've
forwarded the info to my prof. and hopefully he'd make good use of it.
It also helps me understand the matter better.
The sad thing about this triple canopy forest thing is that the
forests were more severely damaged after the war then when it was
going on :(
Best wishes to all.
Nguyet
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From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 12:38 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
The damage was probably more severe pre-war too. I recall some wonderful maps in the French archives at Aix-en-Provence which showed a massive extent of deforestation during the colonial period. Which, of course, does not excuse the use of chemical weapons - but the massive population explosion in SE Asia over the past one or two centuries probably accounts for most of it.
cheers,
Melanie
--
Melanie Beresford
Associate Professor in Economics
Faculty of Business & Economics
Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia
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From: Pam McElwee
Date: Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 7:31 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear all -
Sorry I missed this discussion last week as I was traveling, but I don't have any thing new to add to what has already been noted. I tried to sort through all the stats on acreage and damage from AO in wartime as well as long term post-war damage for a book on conservation in VN that I am currently writing, and it is a mess. The short answer is we don't really know; Westing's figures are about as close are we are likely to get but still there are a lot of questions. As Susan noted, some people take acreage sprayed as the proxy for forest destruction but that isn't accurate as spraying=defoliation, but not necessarily tree death. It depended on the species, when sprayed, how many times, etc. Also, 'inland forest' or 'upland forest' as a category is not very accurate - it's mainly used to distinguish between mangroves and everything else - but there are a lot of different types of inland forest (lowland wet evergreen, dry deciduous forests of the Central Highlands, higher elevation pine forests, swampy Melaleuca forests, etc) which were affected in different ways. "Triple canopy" forests usually refers to Dipterocarp dominated forests - but this was not the only, or even the dominant, type of forest in S. Vietnam. But understandably, no one was out measuring impacts precisely while it was happening, so we are unlikely to ever know the true extent.
What I think is probably most accurate, however, is that post-war damage to forests was just as significant, if not more so, than war-time damage. Post-war logging happened in quite a frenzy and was not very well managed, the impacts of which can be seen to this day in many areas (esp. northern areas) that got no AO damage at all.
Pam McElwee
Dr. Pamela McElwee
Assistant Professor
Department of Human Ecology
School of Environmental and Biological Sciences
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
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