Central Highlands has the largest forest area of Vietnam, with the feature of a large number of natural forests; the majority is under the management of state-owned enterprises. Whereas community, households are assigned only very few areas of forests, mainly poor and low-quality areas. It is necessary to protect and develop forests towards multi-purpose, binding economic-social aspects and ecological environment to sustainable livelihoods for people - especially the ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands.
 Current status of forests in Central Highlands
Central Highlands is located in the tropical savanna, the climate here is divided into two seasons - rainy season from May to October and dry season from November to April, in which March and April are the hottest and driest months. Due to the impacts of the altitude, in 400-500 meter plateaus, the climate is relatively cool with plenty of rains. With the feature of basalt soil, Central Highlands is suitable for planting industrial crops such as coffee tree, cocoa, pepper and mulberry. Cashew and rubber are also being planted here. Coffee is the most important industrial crops in Central Highlands; and this is also the second largest rubber plantation area after the Southeast.

In the special use forest system of Vietnam, there are 5 national parks in Central Highlands: Chu Mom Ray (Kon Tum), Kon Ka Kinh (Gia Lai), Yok Don (Dak Lak), Chu Yang Sin (Dak Lak) and Bicloup Nui Ba (Lam Dong) with an area of about 340,000 hectares and 6 natural reserves: Ngoc Linh (Kon Tum), Kon Chir Rang (Gia Lai), Ea So, Nam Kar (Dak Lak), Nam Nung, Ta Dung (Dak Nong). There also accumulates the rich in biodiversity of rare genetic resources of flora and fauna. Thus, if the protection of this system is well-managed, it will ensure the conservation of endemic rare plants and animals with high economic value.
 The changes in areas of Central Highland Forests
Forest resources and forestry land in the Central Highlands are facing the risk of an increasingly serious decline due to many different causes – deforestation and illegal exploitation of forest products, which have not been controlled. Due to the decline of forest resources, the production of wood continuously decreases, from 600-700 thousand m3 in the late 80s - early 90s to only about 200-300 thousand m3/year until now. Currently, local authorities of Central Highland provinces are experimenting land allocation, forestry land lease for organizations, households and individuals with stable use; and forest allocation, forest protection contracts for household and community in highland villages.
The total forest area in the Central Highlands currently is 2,848,000 hectares with 52.1% of coverage. The data sheet above shows that the forest area of Central Highlands continuously decreased continuously. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, forest areas of Central Highlands decrease an average of over 25,000 hectares annually from 2005 to 2012. Accordingly, forest transition to other using purposes accounted for 78% (mainly for rubber planting, hydropower and irrigation development, agriculture cultivation and industrial park construction), the exploitation of artificial forests on schedule accounted for about 4%, illegal deforestation accounted for about 6%, etc. Besides, the forest quality also obviously declines: forest with reserves has a small area (1,772,744 ha), reaching 32.4% of coverage, the remaining areas are mainly forest without reserves or low reserves.
Currently the core zones of these national parks are also being seriously destroyed. Only in the early nine months of 2012, there occurred nearly 5,000 violation cases of Law on Forest Protection and Development in the entire region had. Many watershed protection forests are severely damaged. Some buffer and core zones of natural reserves and national parks in the area have been illegally logged and encroached for cultivation purposes, noticeably in  Tuy Duc, Dak Song, Dak Ngo of Dak Nong province; Da Huoai of Lam Dong; Krong Nang, Ea Hleo, Ea Sup of Dak Lak; Kon Plong, Mang Yang, Kbang of Kon Tum, etc.
Source: monre.gov.vn