Yok Don

Yok Don National Park was established in 1992 in Dak Lak province, in the central highlands of Vietnam, next to the Cambodian border, and at some 1,155 km² it is one of the largest in the country.

It protects the largest block of dry deciduous dipterocarp forest left in Vietnam, an ecosystem very different from the rainforest that dominates the country's image: widely spaced trees, a grassy understorey, a strong seasonal contrast between the dry season, in which the forest sheds its leaves and burns frequently, and the wet. That forest type is the characteristic habitat of the large herbivores of South-East Asia.

Yok Don is the last significant stronghold of the Asian elephant in Vietnam, with a very small and fragmented population that suffers conflict with agriculture and the effects of isolation from the Cambodian populations. The park is also home to banteng, gaur and a dry-forest birdlife with green peafowl. The region is the territory of the Ede and M'nong peoples, with a long tradition of capturing and taming elephants that in recent years has been shifting towards models of observation without riding.