Bringing Sarus Cranes Back to Vietnam's Plain of Reeds

Tram Chim National Park in Dong Thap province protects the last fragment of the Plain of Reeds, the seasonally flooded grassland that once covered Vietnam's Mekong Delta. Decades of holding water behind dykes for fire prevention smothered the nang kim eleocharis grassland whose tubers eastern sarus cranes dig for, and the birds disappeared from the park. Under a 2022–2032 provincial conservation programme run with the International Crane Foundation, the Zoological Park Organization of Thailand, the Vietnam Zoos Association and Saigon Zoo, managers have reinstated seasonal drawdown and controlled burning across about 1,000 hectares, restoring nearly 100 hectares of nang kim in the core zone. Six young cranes reared at Nakhon Ratchasima Zoo arrived in April 2025 and five were still healthy and paired for breeding by November. The buffer zone is being converted to wildlife-friendly rice so that the landscape the cranes return to is farmed rather than fenced off.