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In Vietnam, most protected areas are guarded and their natural resources are conserved by forest rangers, who carry out their law enforcement duties from forest stations. Previous research projects have been undertaken on law enforcement performance during traditional patrolling in most protected areas; however, insights into patrolling efforts at the local level, as a part of protection activities, have been significantly missing. The aim of this paper was to compare the law enforcement performance of rangers at two forest stations in the Pu Hu Nature Reserve (NR). These forest rangers face different challenges and illegal activities, depending on local conditions, which means that their law enforcement activities can vary widely. The results provided initial insights into the different variables of law enforcement performance and illegal encounters at the local level. The number of illegal encounters and distance walked were not significantly different between the two forest stations, unlike other variables, such as relative altitude, walking speed, and patrol hours. The ratios of illegal encounters to relative altitude and to speed at the Nam Tien Forest Station were higher than the equivalent findings at the Trung Thanh Forest Station due to differences in terms of the patrolling hours and distance walked between the two forest stations. Action to improve conservation is essentially a matter of implementing conservation planning in parallel with the current situation. Undoubtedly, the successful management of forests by stations in a protected area will be indicated by a positive law enforcement performance.

Understanding the contributions of participants from management practices and those from the local community to protected areas (PAs) as nature reserves, is crucial for forest protection and resource conservation. Thus, empirical studies have usually investigated whether patrolling has significantly improved forest protection action. Many previous studies have exhaustively examined the contributions to forest protection by rangers or local persons, but there has been little research on the contribution of both sides to patrol efforts with separate consideration given to each. This paper explores insights into the patrol efforts in the Nam Tien forest station. The total number of patrollers, walking distances, and working days across years were significantly different between the ranger and local person patrol groups. There was a considerable variation in the number of patrollers (Z = 2.02; p < 0.01), distance (Z = 2.45; p < 0.01) and working days (Z = 2.37; p < 0.01) between rangers and local persons related to monthly patrolling. For the traditional patrols in the various PAs, it is shown that, for long-term forest protection, local persons patrolling should be considered more, in order to achieve the sustainable conservation.

In the various protected areas such as nature reserves and national parks in Vietnam, ranger patrols are crucial for protecting forest resources against the increasing threats from fringe communities. Previous studies have investigated ranger patrol efforts (RPEs) in conservation areas using conventional measures in terms of illegal activities encountered, but there has been little research into indices related to RPEs in the field, both worldwide and particularly in Vietnam. This paper explores various indices of RPEs and other aspects of forest patrolling at a local level. The number of rangers and patrol-days strongly influences the distance walked and the number of patrol-hours. However, neither the rainy season nor the Lunar New Year festival had any significant effect on patrol efforts, nor was there any effect on the relative altitude covered or the speed of patrolling during the long Lunar New Year vacation. Management responsible for protecting forest areas needs to consider the full scope of rangers’ efforts and identify the qualities of motivated staff. Our findings suggested ways in which rangers’ capacity to promote conservation may be assessed in the future.