Ornithologist Vo Quy’s journey to study dioxins from birds

GS. Vo Quy is a famous Vietnamese scientist on biodiversity and environment. Most of his friends call him the ornithologist. However, few people know, he also spent his life researching the effects of dioxin poison.
Friend of birds

GS. Vo Quy loves nature , interested in raising birds from a young age, he soon oriented himself to pursue a major in Ornithology right from the moment he started teaching at the Department of Biology, Hanoi University (1956). Ornithologist Vo Quy. “I have a habit of watching birds since I was 5-6 years old, so I know all the birds in my hometown. Knowing the habits of each species such as what time to wake up, when to return to the nest, what fruit to eat, how to reproduce… When I went to university, I decided to follow the path of science and birds become my research object”, while still alive, Prof. Vo Quy once confided to the press. When he was just over 30 years old, GS. Vo Quy discovered a new species of pheasant – Hemorrhoids Ha Tinh, in Ke Go area (Ky Anh district, Ha Tinh province). Although scientists around the world refused to recognize his discovery, Prof. Vo Quy Kien still persists in researching Tri Lam Ha Tinh (also known as “big chicken” in the local language). Twenty years later, those documents convinced international scientists and the International Council for the Protection of Birds (ICBP) to name this bird “in memory of the man who discovered and accurately described a species of bird.” Rare new hemorrhoids. Up to now, GS. Vo Quy and his colleagues and students made information records for more than 1,000 species and subspecies of birds in our country. He wrote 14 books about birds such as: “Birds of Vietnam” (volumes 1, 2), “Life of birds”, “List of birds in Vietnam”…; is the main translator of 3 books on the environment and is also the author of more than 100 scientific works published in the country and abroad. Therefore, this brilliant scientist was loved by his colleagues and students as “the ornithologist”. In his scientific life, besides birds, Prof. Vo Quy conducts many research projects on rare animal species as well as many other fields of biodiversity and environment. Attaching life to… Agent Orange Knowledge of birds has made Prof. Vo Quy noticed the impact of toxic chemicals (dioxins) on Vietnam. Because he understood that where there were birds, there was life. The images he recorded of the vast forests dying from Agent Orange, the desolate landscape, without a single bird call convinced the world about the terrible impact of Agent Orange on the environment. our country school. GS. Vo Quy on a business trip. He started working on dioxin research in the 1970s. In the smoke and fire of the war in the South, at the suggestion of Prof. Ton That Tung, he and a group of scientists went to survey the war consequences caused by US chemical poisons in the Ben Hai area. However, at that time, the war was fierce, the delegation of Prof. When Vo Quy entered Hien Luong, he could not cross the 17th parallel to enter the South, the trip was unsuccessful. In 1974, despite knowing many difficulties and dangers, Prof. Vo Quy resolutely applied to enter the South again, bringing a delegation of 10 people. Three months of diving along Truong Son Road. He witnessed with his own eyes thousands of hectares of forests were sprayed with toxic chemicals by the US, all life was brutally destroyed. During that survey, Prof. Vo Quy and his colleagues recorded 300 16-millimeter movies of vast forests with old trees that many people could not hold to die from Agent Orange. The landscape was desolate, not a single bird chirping, gibbons singing. It was from what he witnessed firsthand that made GS. Vo Quy came to the conclusion as early as the 1980s that it would take hundreds of years for two million hectares of poisoned forest to regenerate itself. “The work of resurrecting the dead land is extremely difficult. Where it is sprayed a few times, the remaining trees may have a chance to regenerate, where it is sprayed many times, the trees die, the soil is eroded, the grass is covered, the American grass is covered, the forest trees are very difficult to grow. return without human impact.” In addition, GS. Vo Quy further affirmed, even if people try to plant forests, but do not fully understand the characteristics of the land degraded by toxic chemicals, in order to choose suitable tree species, afforestation will be difficult to succeed. public. He estimates that the cost of planting a patch of forest contaminated with toxic chemicals is 10 times more expensive than planting a plot of normal forest. Therefore, unable to wait for the forest to regenerate naturally, he and his colleagues proposed a solution to afforestation and received many responses from many localities. In 1994, at the Global Strategy Conference on the Environment in Canada, Prof. Vo Quy made the point that in order to protect forests, there must be community participation, persuading each person to be a ranger. Invite readers to watch the video: The 18-year-old girl in Dien Bien escaped from isolation twice. Source: THDT.