I work as a ranger in the nature reserve around Fansipan, Vietnam’s highest mountain. Environmental conditions have changed, although tourism is not the only cause. Fires have damaged the area, including a major one in 1999, and local people continue cutting wood for fuel and house construction.
Our patrols cover the protected reserve, where cutting trees is forbidden. People still do it, and the area is too large for us to watch continuously.
Climbing Fansipan is technically illegal, although tourists and guides regularly make the trek. If we encounter a group, we send it back. The tourists themselves are not fined, but their guide may have to pay two or three million dong for taking a group of five or six people into the restricted area.
There are only eight of us, no checkpoint at the entrance and an entire mountain open to anyone who finds a path.
Enforcement is difficult. Guides depend on trekking for their income and are unlikely to tell visitors that the climb is not officially permitted. If they did, they would lose work. Everyone knows the rule, yet the tourism economy encourages people to work around it.
Tourists have so far caused limited damage: rubbish left behind, plants taken as souvenirs and fires lit for warmth. The problem is that there are no proper guidelines available to them. The few signs in the area are written only in Vietnamese, so foreign visitors must depend on their guides.
We advise guides through government channels and try to limit the damage, but responsibility is divided. The People’s Committee manages other tourism areas and receives visitor income, while environmental problems often become the rangers’ responsibility.
One authority receives the benefits, another is left with the damage, and the mountain itself has no clear voice in the arrangement.
We want English-language information and clearer standards, especially if climbing Fansipan becomes legal. But guidelines alone will not be enough. We need checkpoints, more rangers and stronger government support to make the rules credible.
I also see social concerns connected with tourism. Crime remains low, but young girls from minority villages increasingly come to town to sell handicrafts without much parental supervision. Boys from those villages usually stay home to work in the fields.
If visitor numbers continue to grow without better organisation, every problem will become harder to manage. Tourism has not yet caused catastrophic environmental harm, but that is not a reason to wait until it does.
Eight rangers cannot protect a mountain through warnings alone; Fansipan needs rules that visitors can understand, guides can follow and authorities are prepared to enforce.