Through the Forest, a Clearer View of the Needs of a People

Phung Tuu Boi reaches down to inspect one of the spiny shrubs lined up in a row before him. A few feet away, a cow grazes serenely in this emerald valley in the hills of central Vietnam.

Mr. Boi, a forester and director of the Center for Assistance in Nature Conservation and Community Development in Hanoi, points to the cow. “See this?” he says. “Very, very bad.”

An invisible poison clings to the soil beneath the cow’s muddy hoofs. During a short stretch of the Vietnam War this patch of ground served as an American Special Forces air base, and while the soldiers departed long ago, a potent dioxin from the Agent Orange that they stored and sprayed here lingers still.

Mr. Boi, a lively, passionate man whose enormous smile rarely leaves his face, has dedicated his career to repairing the ecological damage left by what people here call the American War. And while he has had much success in the last 30 years, his task is far from over.

When Mr. Boi began working here in 1975, he found an ecosystem decimated by war. Aerial spraying of defoliants like Agent Orange had destroyed large swaths of forest. Without live roots to anchor the soil, monsoon rains washed away the topsoil and its nutrients, allowing invasive grasses to take over and prevent forest regeneration.

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