If policy recommendations are to be effective and benign, they must take human actors and their needs, both economic and cultural, into account. So what kinds of policy recommendations am I talking about, and how is the American Museum of Natural History involved? Well, the Vietnamese government wants to double the size of its protected area system in the near future. They recognize that the existing system, which was formulated in the 1960's,in the middle of the war, actually, and encompasses areas that are too small to sustain larger species.

Dr. Craighead has talked a little bit before about the larger mammals and carnivores in particular trying to live in these small areas. It's almost impossible for them to find the prey that they need to survive. The average size of a protected area in Vietnam is only 16,000 hectares. In case you're not familiar with hectares, that's roughly half the size of the Golden Gate area, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

So we at the museum are working together with researchers from the Vietnamese Institute for Ecology and Biological Resources in Hanoi and the Missouri Botanical Gardens to formulate recommendations regarding where these new protected areas should be, taking into account the relative diversity and uniqueness of the plants and animals, and the relationship of local people to their land.

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