My Son: 1,160 Hectares, and27 Species Caught on Camera
My Son is known for its brick towers, not its animals. Over one winter, 30
camera traps in the forest around the temples recorded 27 wild species -
ten protected under Vietnamese law, one threatened worldwide - and the
record claims nothing more than who was there.
At 16:27 on 29 December 2025, a camera trap in the forest around My Son photographed an adult northern pig-tailed macaque sitting in the leaf litter, one
youngster at its side staring into the lens and another trotting past. The macaque
is one of 27 wild species that 30 camera traps recorded over a single winter in the
1,160 hectares of forest around the World Heritage temples [1],[2], and the only one
of them listed as threatened worldwide [3].
Photo 1. An adult northern pig-tailed macaque (Macaca leonina) with two young on the forest floor, 29 December 2025, 16:27 - the only species on the list rated Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, and in Group IIB under Vietnamese law. Camera-trap image, My Son landscape protection area.
• A temple valley inside a forest
Between the 4th and 13th centuries the Champa kingdom built brick tower-temples in a
mountain basin inland from Hoi An, and for most of the kingdom's existence the site was its religious and political capital [4]. The temples were raised to Hindu gods, above all Shiva. UNESCO inscribed My Son Sanctuary on the World Heritage List in 1999 as an exceptional example of cultural interchange and a vivid record of the Champa Kingdom. Eight groups of 71 standing monuments survive, with extensive archaeology still buried, after damage in the Second World War and both Indochina wars, the second above all [4].
The setting is part of the heritage. UNESCO describes an elevated basin ringed by mountains, its water running past the monuments into the Thu Bon River and out to sea near Hoi An [4]. The heritage management board calls it a relatively closed, bowl-shaped valley in which the evergreen forest around the towers regulates run-off and limits erosion and landslides at the monuments [5]. The site, which UNESCO still lists under Duy Phu commune in Quang Nam province, now lies in Thu Bon commune of Da Nang city [4],[6].
The forest is also most of the site. The 1999 inscription drew a 142-hectare property with a 920-hectare buffer zone [4]. In 2020 the provincial authorities set up a landscape protection area of 1,160 hectares, 98.1 per cent of it zoned for landscape protection, with the stated aims of protecting the monuments, conserving the forest ecosystem and conserving the wild plants and animals already living there [7]. Of its 1,160.05 hectares, 1,115.68 are forestry land, mostly special-use forest, and 34 households from Nhuan Son village hold contracts to protect 1,011.38 hectares of it [5]. UNESCO's own statement of the site's value notes that the management of the forested areas surrounding the site needs to be improved [4].
The forest is most of My Son. The landscape protection area set up in 2020 covers 1,160 hectares - more than eight times the 142-hectare World Heritage property drawn at inscription in 1999 - and 1,115.68 hectares of it is forestry land. On average, each of the 15 camera points stands for about 77 hectares. Squares are drawn to scale by area and show size only, not boundaries or location. Sources: UNESCO World Heritage Centre; Bao Van Hoa (2020, 2026); Tien Phong (2026).
• Thirty cameras, one winter
The survey was simple by design. Under Plan No. 13/KH-KBVCQ, from late November 2025 the board of the My Son landscape protection area and the Da Nang City Special-Use Forest Management Board installed 30 camera traps across every sub-compartment of the forest [2]; later reporting places them at 15 points [6]. They went where animals travel - along trails and streams, in forest with high canopy cover and little human disturbance [1]. A camera trap fires when an animal moves in front of it and photographs whatever passes, day or night, with nobody present, which suits shy and nocturnal species that are hard to observe directly [8].
The window was short. The board describes monitoring concentrated in the last two months of 2025 and the start of 2026 [1]; a later summary gives December 2025 to January 2026 [5]. The images supplied for this article carry stamps from 04:02 on 29 November 2025 to 17:15 on 21 January 2026, and they show why the method matters: the leopard cat walked past at 03:22, the brush-tailed porcupine at 03:41 and the palm civet at 04:02, while the laughingthrush, the scaly thrush and the junglefowl came through shortly after seven in the morning.
Date and time printed on the 22 camera-trap images supplied for this article that carry a legible stamp, one image per species. The leopard cat, the palm civet, the bamboo rat and both porcupines were photographed in the dark; most birds came in daylight. A single frame per species shows when each picture was taken, not when each animal is most active. Shading marks approximate hours of darkness. Source: image stamps, My Son camera-trap survey, 29 November 2025 - 21 January 2026.
Photo 2. A leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) passing at 03:22 on 8 January 2026. Least Concern worldwide, but in Group IIB under Vietnamese law. Camera-trap image, My Son landscape protection area.
What the cameras record is presence. A frame proves that a species was at a given spot at a given minute; it says nothing about how many animals live in the forest or whether their numbers are rising or falling, and a species missing from the list may simply never have walked past a lens. With 15 camera points across 1,160 hectares, each stands for some 77 hectares of forest on average. The board names the limits itself: camera density is still low, monitoring covered only the turn of the year and so misses seasonal change, and staff and funding are limited.
77 ha - Average area of forest per camera point: 30 cameras at 15 points across the 1,160-hectare landscape protection area.
• Twenty-seven species, read line by line
The table the board published has 27 lines: 14 mammals and 13 birds [1]. Its text groups them differently, as eight mammals and 19 birds and other animals active mainly on the ground [2],[9], and English-language wire coverage repeated that split [10]. The table is the primary record and is the one followed here. Three of its lines stop short of a species - a rat of the family Muridae, a bamboo rat of the subfamily Rhizomyinae and a ferret-badger of the genus Melogale - which is normal in camera-trap work, where a single frame rarely shows the features that separate close relatives.
The 27 taxa on the board's camera-trap list, by group and protection status. Ten are in Group IIB of Vietnam's list of endangered, precious and rare forest animals; one of them, the northern pig-tailed macaque, is also Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Three entries are identified only to genus, subfamily or family. Vietnamese names are given without diacritics. Sources: species table of the My Son World Cultural Heritage Management Board, published 25 February 2026; Circular 85/2025/TT-BNNMT, Appendix I.
Coverage has also drifted beyond the survey. The same wire report named the greater coucal, the red-throated flycatcher, the slow loris and the pangolin among the notable findings [10]; none of the four is in the board's table. In late October 2026 a critically endangered Sunda pangolin, handed in by local residents, was released into the protected forest [11], and a wider biodiversity compilation reported that month - 238 species of vascular plants and 607 of animals - draws on inventories the cameras could never produce, fish and insects among them [5],[6]. Those are separate records, and they are kept separate here.
Read by way of life, the list is a cross-section of the floor of a central Vietnamese monsoon forest [6]. The mammals include a browsing deer, the red muntjac; omnivores such as the wild boar and the Asian palm civet; small and mid-sized carnivores - the leopard cat, the yellow-throated marten, the Javan mongoose and the ferret-badger; a primate; and rodents, from two squirrels to two porcupines. The birds are mostly ground-foragers: red junglefowl, the Siamese fireback, two hill partridges, the blue-rumped pitta, thrushes, babblers, an emerald dove and the Malayan night heron [1]. One is a visitor in the strictest sense. The Siberian rubythroat breeds in Siberia and spends the northern winter in South and Southeast Asia [12]; at My Son it is a species passing through, exactly the kind a winter survey catches.
27 - Wild species recorded by 30 camera traps in the My Son landscape protection area between late November 2025 and January 2026: 14 mammals and 13 birds, by the board's own table.
• Ten on the protected list, one threatened worldwide
Vietnamese law sorts endangered, precious and rare forest animals into two groups. Group IB holds species whose wild-caught specimens may not be exploited or used for commercial purposes at all; Group IIB holds those for which such use is restricted. A species qualifies for Group II if it is on CITES Appendix II or III, rated Vulnerable or worse on the IUCN Red List or in Vietnam's Red Data Book, or judged likely to become endangered because it is over-exploited and traded [13]. Ten of the 27 are in Group IIB: five mammals - the macaque, the red muntjac, the leopard cat, the Asian palm civet and the ferret-badgers - and five birds - the Siamese fireback, the bar-backed and green-legged partridges, the blue-rumped pitta and the white-crested laughingthrush [1],[13]. The board's table cites Circular 27/2025/TT-BNNMT, which Circular 85/2025/TT-BNNMT replaced on 1 January 2026; the new list keeps all ten in Group IIB and gives the muntjac its current name, Muntiacus vaginalis [13]. None of the 27 is in Group IB.
The northern pig-tailed macaque is the one species on the list threatened worldwide, rated Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List [3]. It ranges from India and Bangladesh through Myanmar and south-west China to Thailand and Indochina, under pressure from habitat loss, hunting and the illegal pet trade [14]. At My Son it was recorded relatively often and at several camera positions, and the groups included young - which the board reads as a sign that the forest is breeding habitat for the species, not just a place to feed [1],[9].
None of the other nine is threatened worldwide; the leopard cat [15], the Siamese fireback [16], the red muntjac [17] and the blue-rumped pitta [18], for example, are all rated Least Concern. That is not a contradiction. The IUCN measures extinction risk across a species' whole range, while Vietnam's Group II also covers species on the CITES trade appendices and species judged at risk from over-exploitation [13]. An animal can be secure across Asia and still under pressure in one country's forests.
Photo 3. A female Siamese fireback (Lophura diardi) foraging in the leaf litter, one of the ground birds the board treats as a sign of an undisturbed forest floor. Group IIB under Vietnamese law. Camera-trap image, My Son landscape protection area; the frame carries no legible time stamp.
The board puts particular weight on the ground birds. The Siamese fireback, the partridges and the red junglefowl, along with other species sensitive to disturbance, are in its reading a sign that the forest floor around the towers is still relatively quiet [1]. Repeated records of many species at the same positions led it to name core habitats - high canopy, close to streams, away from people - at Ho Mit, Vuon Ba, Doc Chui, Na Thang and Hon Den, and to propose them as priority zones for protection [1],[9].
Photo 4. A red muntjac (Muntiacus vaginalis) browsing at 16:12 on 6 January 2026. Group IIB under Vietnamese law. Camera-trap image, My Son landscape protection area.
10 of 27 - Species in Group IIB of Vietnam's list of endangered, precious and rare forest animals. One of them, the northern pig-tailed macaque, is also Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.
• A baseline, not a census
The board presents the results as evidence that the forest still carries the ecological
foundations of the heritage site, reading the mix of herbivores, omnivores, mid-sized
carnivores and a primate as a sign that basic food chains are intact [1],[2]. A few months of presence records cannot carry that conclusion on their own, and they do not need to. Their value is plainer: a dated, photographed list of the species that live in, or pass through, the forest around My Son, made at a known place and time, against which every later survey can be checked.
The next steps are already on the table. The board recommends long-term monitoring, writing biodiversity into heritage management plans and more awareness work with local communities [1]. In October 2026 it met WWF-Vietnam; the support discussed includes training in camera-trap placement, periodic monitoring, software, checking the species list and standardising the data, along with a possible dossier for recognition as an OECM - an 'other effective area-based conservation measure' - which the report stresses is a direction, not a decision [5]. A month earlier, Da Nang had given the board the full functions and powers of forest owner [5].
Photo 5. A blue-rumped pitta (Hydrornis soror) at dusk, 17:15 on 21 January 2026 - the last stamped image in the set. Group IIB under Vietnamese law. Camera-trap image, My Son landscape protection area.
My Son's towers have been surveyed, drawn and restored since French archaeologists
recorded them in the early twentieth century [4]. The forest that holds them has had one winter of cameras. The 27 species on the list are not a count and not a trend; they are a starting line. Whether the macaques with young in December 2025 belong to a troop that lives in the temple valley or were passing through is a question only cameras running through every season, year after year, can answer.
• References
1. Cong Huy. "Thanh dia My Son ghi nhan 27 loai dong vat hoang da qua bay anh, co loai nguy cap" [My Son Sanctuary records 27 wild animal species by camera trap, including an endangered species]. Bao Phap Luat Viet Nam, 25 February 2026. https://baophapluat.vn/thanh-dia-my-son-ghi-nhan-27-loai-dong-vat-hoang-da-qua-bay-anh-co-loai-nguy-cap.html (accessed 6 November 2026). Includes the species table published by the My Son World Cultural Heritage Management Board, the primary record used here.
2. Khanh Chi. "Ghi nhan su hien dien 27 loai dong vat hoang da tai khu vuc rung My Son" [Presence of 27 wild animal species recorded in the My Son forest]. Bao Van Hoa, 25 February 2026. https://baovanhoa.vn/doi-song/ghi-nhan-su-hien-dien-27-loai-dong-vat-hoang-da-tai-khu-vuc-rung-my-son-206836.html (accessed 6 November 2026).
3. Boonratana, R., Chetry, D., Yongcheng, L., Jiang, X.-L., Htun, S. and Timmins, R.J. "Macaca leonina." The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T39792A186071807. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-2.RLTS.T39792A186071807.en. Category: Vulnerable.
4. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. "My Son Sanctuary." World Heritage List, property 949: inscribed 1999, criteria (ii) and (iii), property 142 ha, buffer zone 920 ha. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/949/ (consulted 6 November 2026 in the Internet Archive copy of 2025, as the live page blocked automated access).
5. Thu Hoai. "My Son va WWF mo huong bao ton di san tu phuc hoi rung" [My Son and WWF open a path to heritage conservation through forest restoration]. Bao Van Hoa, 24 October 2026. https://baovanhoa.vn/van-hoa/my-son-va-wwf-mo-huong-bao-ton-di-san-tu-phuc-hoi-rung-278665.html (accessed 6 November 2026).
6. Tien Phong. "Bay anh he lo nhieu loai thu quy hiem o rung My Son" [Camera traps reveal many rare mammals in the My Son forest]. Tien Phong, 28 October 2026. https://tienphong.vn/bay-anh-he-lo-nhieu-loai-thu-quy-hiem-o-rung-my-son-post1889293.tpo (accessed 6 November 2026). Its group totals for the 607 animal species add up to 537; used here only for the 15 camera points, the commune and the forest type.
7. Bao Van Hoa. "Thanh lap Khu bao ve canh quan di tich lich su My Son: Them hanh lang phap ly bao ton canh quan khu di san" [Establishing the My Son landscape protection area: a further legal basis for conserving the heritage landscape]. Bao Van Hoa, 26 October 2020. https://baovanhoa.vn/di-san/thanh-lap%C2%A0khu-bao-ve-canh-quan-di-tich-lich-su-my-son-them-hanh-lang-phap-ly-bao-ton-canh-quan-khu-di-san-69077.html (accessed 6 November 2026).
8. K. Chi. "Ung dung cong nghe 'bay anh' gop phan bao ve canh quan di tich My Son" [Camera-trap technology helps protect the My Son heritage landscape]. Bao Van Hoa, 5 May 2026. https://baovanhoa.vn/nhip-song-so/ung-dung-cong-nghe-bay-anh-bao-ve-canh-quan-my-son-223735.html (accessed 6 November 2026).
9. Hoai Van. "Phat hien nhieu loai dong vat quy hiem o My Son" [Many rare animal species found at My Son]. Tien Phong, 26 February 2026. https://tienphong.vn/phat-hien-nhieu-loai-dong-vat-quy-hiem-o-my-son-post1823047.tpo (accessed 6 November 2026).
10. Viet Nam News (VNA/VNS). "Twenty-seven wildlife species recorded in protective forest of My Son Sanctuary." Viet Nam News, 26 February 2026. https://vietnamnews.vn/life-style/1766351/twenty-seven-wildlife-species-recorded-in-protective-forest-of-my-son-sanctuary.html (accessed 6 November 2026).
11. Tien Phong. "Hai dong vat quy hiem duoc tha ve Khu bao ve canh quan My Son" [Two rare animals released into the My Son landscape protection area]. Tien Phong, 27 October 2026. https://tienphong.vn/hai-dong-vat-quy-hiem-duoc-tha-ve-khu-bao-ve-canh-quan-my-son-post1889128.tpo (accessed 6 November 2026).
12. Wikipedia (English). "Siberian rubythroat." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_rubythroat (accessed 6 November 2026). Used only for the species' breeding and wintering range.
13. Ministry of Agriculture and Environment of Viet Nam. Circular 85/2025/TT-BNNMT of 31 December 2025 on the management of endangered, precious and rare species, with Appendix I (list of endangered, precious and rare species). In force from 1 January 2026, replacing Circular 27/2025/TT-BNNMT of 24 June 2025, which the board's table cites and which was not consulted directly. https://datafiles.chinhphu.vn/cpp/files/vbpq/2026/01/85-bnnmt.pdf and https://datafiles.chinhphu.vn/cpp/files/vbpq/2026/01/85-bnnmt-pl1.pdf (accessed 6 November 2026).
14. Wikipedia (English). "Northern pig-tailed macaque." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_pig-tailed_macaque (accessed 6 November 2026). Used only for the summary of range and threats, which cites the IUCN assessment (reference 3).
15. Ghimirey, Y., Petersen, W., Jahed, N., Akash, M., Lynam, A.J., Kun, S., Din, J., Nawaz, M.A., Singh, P., Dhendup, T., Chua, M.A.H., Gray, T.N.E. and Phyoe Kyaw, P. "Prionailurus bengalensis." The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2023: e.T223138747A226150742. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2023-1.RLTS.T223138747A226150742.en. Category: Least Concern (see note to reference 3).
16. BirdLife International. "Lophura diardi." The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T22679274A92808547. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T22679274A92808547.en. Category: Least Concern (see note to reference 3).
17. Timmins, R.J., Steinmetz, R., Samba Kumar, N., Anwarul Islam, Md. and Sagar Baral, H. "Muntiacus vaginalis." The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T136551A22165292. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-1.RLTS.T136551A22165292.en. Category: Least Concern (see note to reference 3).
18. BirdLife International. "Hydrornis soror." The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2025: e.T22698605A280976843. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2025-2.RLTS.T22698605A280976843.en. Category: Least Concern (see note to reference 3).
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