The forest is located in Phu Tho Village, An Thuy Commune, Le Thuy District.
Local residents, including the elders, have no idea about the age of the forest. They only know that it has been there throughout living memory. They say that the forest has protected the village from storms, hidden them during wartime and provided shelter for the people.
This forest has been preserved over many generations even though the price of this kind of wood has increased sharply. Some traders in the village were willing to buy trees around the village at tens of billions of VND. Estimates of the value of the wood contained in the forest are in the hundreds of billions of VND. But the villagers decided not to exploit it, as they consider it their treasure and their “lung”.
Under the village regulation, anyone who damages the forest will be strictly dealt with. The village security force recently caught an illegal logger, who was imprisoned. The man’s family was obliged to find another tree from somewhere else to replace the one he had cut down.