Bach Ma

Bach Ma National Park was established in 1991 in Thua Thien Hue province, in central Vietnam, and protects some 220 km² on a massif of the Annamite range that descends from 1,450 metres to almost sea level within a few kilometres.

Its interest is biogeographical: the massif sits exactly at the transition between the floras and faunas of northern and southern Vietnam, and elements of both meet in it, which produces a very high diversity. It also receives one of the highest rainfalls in the country, with more than eight thousand millimetres a year at the higher altitudes, and that moisture supports a dense evergreen forest with abundant epiphytes and ferns.

The Annamite range has yielded in recent decades some of the most remarkable zoological discoveries in the world, among them the saola, a large bovid described in 1992 and barely ever seen in the wild. Bach Ma is home to douc langurs, white-cheeked gibbons and a birdlife with species endemic to the range, such as Edwards's pheasant, of which there have been no confirmed sightings in the wild for years. On the summit stand the ruins of the hill station the French built in the 1930s as a refuge from the heat.