VNExpress-Sept 18
Local earthworm hunters have devastated a protective forest in north-central Vietnam to supply the black export market to China, and local authorities have brought no recourse. The mountainous district of Ba Thuoc’s Thung Chan protective forest looks more like a war zone has since the Vietnam War carpet bombing of Thanh Hoa province in north-central Vietnam. Larger and larger groups of what are essentially poachers encroaching on protected land have invaded the forest and are cutting down trees and pulling up plants at a rapid rate. Whole patches of the tree-dense area are now bare. The poachers destroy the flora in order to plug electrodes into the ground and shock the soil with electricity that forces the earthworms to rise out of the earth for easy capture. One early morning in September, a group of unknown people approached the forest on motorbikes then trekked to a marked area to start their earthworm hunt, according to reporters. “We jumped in anywhere we see spots with lots of earthworms’ excrement,” said a man only identified as Long. When they found a suitable spot, Long and another man took out the sharp rods connected to a battery. After they placed the iron rods securely into the ground, they connected them to the battery to send currents of electricity into the earth. The worms then appear writhing up out of the soil to escape electrocution. On average, a hunter can catch around 10 kilos of worms per day and sell them for VND35,000 per kilo. For that reason, earthworm hunting has now lured as many as 30 hunters to the forest every day. After catching the worms, they sell them to facilities where the worms are dried and sold to traders who export them to China illegally. Read more at:
