Our Mission
The illegal wildlife trade is destroying our Earth, pushing endangered species to extinction, and threatening public health on a globally deadly scale as the 4th largest black-market industry worldwide. Alarmingly, Vietnam plays a major role in the widespread trafficking of wildlife, with high demand for wildlife and as a wildlife trafficking hub.
Education for Nature – Vietnam (ENV) was established in 2000 as the Vietnam’s first non-governmental organization focused on wildlife conservation. ENV has spearheaded efforts to end Vietnam’s illegal wildlife trade by employing out-of-the-box strategies that strengthen wildlife protection legislation and its application, provide support to law enforcement in addressing wildlife crime, and engage the public to reduce consumer demand and mobilize public action to protect wildlife. ENV is committed to securing a better future for wildlife, both in Vietnam and globally.
Since 2007, ENV has focused its activities in three major program areas that comprise ENV’s integrated approach for addressing illegal wildlife trade in Vietnam.
Policy & Legislation
Law Enforcement Support
Public Awareness
Our History
In the 1990s, after decades of war and isolation, environmental awareness was still a very new concept in Vietnam. However, a small group of passionate, young Vietnamese people recognized a great need for sustainable, long-term, locally-led environmental education across the country. With this goal, Education for Nature – Vietnam (ENV) was established in 2000.
The idea to create a local NGO focused on the conservation of nature and the environment was born from ENV’s Founder and current Executive Director, Vu Thi Quyen. At the time, she was working for the Cuc Phuong Conservation Project (CPCP) under Fauna & Flora International, delivering Vietnam’s first sustained community based environmental awareness program in the buffer zone of Cuc Phuong National Park.
Recognizing the need to develop and expand a sustainable Vietnamese-led initiative to train educators and protected area staff beyond the life of the FFI project, Quyen came upon the idea of establishing her own organization. And thus, ENV was born.
In the early days, ENV continued the CPCP work of training environmental educators, focusing a majority of its efforts on developing programs at national parks and nature reserves.
However at the same time, Vietnam’s economy was rapidly developing, and this new prosperity also brought increased demand for exotic wildlife dishes and traditional medicines that were formerly beyond the reach of most ordinary citizens. In 2004, in response to rising consumer demand, ENV began shifting its approach towards tackling the difficult issue of the illegal wildlife trade on a national scale.