“Oh I saw a snake with feet, really!”,my friend An, a ranger, was very sure about the strange animal he'd seen in Dinh Mountain . He affirmed it was not any kind of lizard or skink he'd ever known.” It both looks like a snake and a lizard. I didn't dare to catch it ‘cause it may have venom”, he said. He'd never seen such a strange species like that before. A glance in my head made me think that it might be one of the two species of

Only appear after some early rains of the rainy season and when darkness has covered the whole forest. This type of cicada lives mostly under the ground and when they have moulted, sung, mated and laid eggs, it means they have completed the job that nature has given. This species has the ability of fast bounding, so it is hard to catch and hard to photograph when they open their colourful sparkling wings and fly.

Sunset was quietly coming down over the Bù Gia Mập National Park. In the far distance the sun that looked like a giant fireball was moving away, leaving the quiet and unsettled night to the world of the animals which were fighting for life and trying to maintain their race for later generations to live on. Somewhere on the rugged old trees which survived for thousands of years, a cicada with its mouth that that looked like the elephant's tusk

Phuoc Binh National Park is 60km far from Phan Rang, the capital of Ninh Thuan province in central of Vietnam. This National Park was established in 2006 and has an area of ​​19,814 ha, in which 80% of the areas are natural forests. Phuoc Binh National Park is adjoining to Bi Doup National Park - Nui Ba and they form a large nature conservation area. Here, primary forests are mainly dipterocarp forests with plants of Dipterocaparceae family

This area is a unique region of Vietnam: a semi - arid like Africa while the other half has tropical forests which often lush with hundreds of species living there.From the National Park headquarters, it took 30 minutes with the bus to reach the study area. The road was zigzagging along the mountainside by the sea with many steeps. The first yellow rays of the day showed on the erect bare rocky cliffs in the buffer zone of the National Park.

Flying lemur has completely different ecology, food and behavior to other species. They live in trees and almost never come to the ground. They have sharp claws to hold on firmly to the tree bark when searching for food. Whenever wanting to move from one tree to another tree, they spread the skin membranes like a kite and glide in the air. This lemur species’ flying ability is mostly from high to low position, so after each “flight” to one tree, it has to climb back to the top of that tree to continue

The Orange Oakleaf butterfly Kallima inachus, one of the best-known butterfly species in Vietnam, has the ability to disguise as a leaf to hide from its enemies. When at rest, it hold wings vertically and looks exactly like a dry leaf; the long tail of hindwing like a stem while a brown line extending to tip of the forewing forms the vein of the “leaf”. When hearing a noise, these butterflies will fly very high and fast, then wedging into the bushes.

An animal with eyes catching light within 100 metres couldn’t escape my single bullet,’ Mr Be Hai, a former hunter, said while sitting in a small tent on his farmland, where he grows cereal crops in the middle of the Vinh Cuu Nature Reserve, in Dong Nai Province. Mr Hai was born in an ancient forest and spent his childhood in the jungle, bathing in cool springs on hot summer days. His father, also a hunter, taught him to use the gun, axe and knife. In the 1980s, the forests in Ma Da

After many days struggling in forests, all we had were footprints, some blurry pictures and broken footages. However, through counting and measuring footsteps and the amount of food the jackals had eaten, we did have some results about their habits. They often live deep in forests with many other animals. Sometimes they even live near fields, farms or residential areas in forests. They live singly or in pairs during the mating season, hunt at night

The spotted flying dragon, Draco maculatus, which can fly from tree to tree in hunting and finding a partner in the mating season, has talent in camouflage. This is a fairly common species in well-protected forests. It often chooses big, old plants to live in and hide in when threatened. In the mating season, the male has a gular flag on its neck to attract a partner. If it doesn’t have the flag, there is no guarantee the female can recognise it against bark. Photo: 2010, Mai fall, Tan Phu, Dong Nai

April is in the rainy season on Mt Fansipan, the highest mountain in Indochina, the time for amphibians to wake up after a long hibernation and search for food, copulate and reproduce, and the most suitable time for researchers like me to study the wildlife, collect specimens and perhaps discover new species. Among the things I came across on a trip in April, 2009, are the following: On a slope, a flower of the milkwort family (Polygalaceae) Polygala tricornis, was blooming

Phuoc Binh National Park is 60 km north of Phan Rang, the capital of Ninh Thuan Province, in central Vietnam. Established in 2006, it is 19,814 ha, 80 per cent natural forest. The primary forests are mainly dipterocarp, with plants of the Dipterocaparceae family and evergreen forests bordering the highlands of Lam Dong Province.The park is home to 327 species of which 50 are in Vietnam’s Red Book 2000, including 23 mammals, 14 birds and 13 reptiles and

Eighty kilometres northwest of Ho Chi Minh City, the last rain of the rainy season was forming a great white curtain over Vinh Cuu National Reserve in Dong Nai Province. Le Dinh Tam, a farmer living in Hamlet 7, Ma Da Village, Vinh Cuu District, Dong Nai Province, said, ‘Các Ông (the elephants) have been around this area for months. They come out of the forest at night, attacking our paddy fields. We stay awake almost every night trying this and that

The spotted flying dragon, Draco maculatus, which can fly from tree to tree in hunting and finding a partner in the mating season, has talent in camouflage. This is a fairly common species in well-protected forests. It often chooses big, old plants to live in and hide in when threatened. In the mating season, the male has a gular flag on its neck to attract a partner. If it doesn’t have the flag, there is no guarantee the female can recognise it against bark. Photo: 2010, Mai fall, Tan Phu, Dong Nai Province.