12 March 2012: The Secretariat of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar Convention) has announced that the Government of Viet Nam has designated its fourth Wetland of International Importance as of World Wetlands Day 2012, bringing the total number of Ramsar Sites globally to 2,000.

According to Ramsar, Tram Chim National Park is one of the few places in the region where the Brownbeard Rice communities survive. It supports nine bird and five fish species that are globally threatened, over 20,000 waterbirds in the dry season, and more than 1% of population of six waterbird species. The site acts as a natural buffer against floods and droughts. Activities carried out on the wetland include tourism and fishing.

Tram Chim is one of the demonstration sites of the “Mekong River Basin Wetland Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Use Programme, Phase I,” implemented by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Mekong River Commission (MRC), and the UN Development Programme (UNDP), with funding from UNDP/the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and SIDA. The programme aims to assist countries in the Lower Mekong subregion to develop new approaches to integrate the protection and sustainable use of wetland biodiversity with economic development, including ecotourism development.

Viet Nam’s designation contributes to one of the goals contained in the Ramsar Convention’s Strategic Plan for 2009-2015, which is to reach a protected area of 250 million hectares by 2015. [Ramsar Press Release]