When Mr. Tilo, a German welder, air-conditioning engineer, arrived in Việt Nam in early 1990s, he immediately fell in love with its nature. He observed that wildlife was widely hunted and traded, especially our closest relatives, primate species. He decided to stay, became a conservationist, and was assigned as a project manager of the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) in 1993. The same year, he founded the Endangered Primate Rescue Center in response to the need for rehabilitation of confiscated primates. He stayed the Director of the EPRC for 22 years. At the time, the occurrence of few small populations of Delacour’s Langur, a Vietnamese endemic and globally critically endangered species, were confirmed in Cuc Phuong National Park and in open-use wetland area nearby, the Van Long wetland.

In the 1990s, small and fragmented langur populations and their habitat in Van Long were under severe threats from different types of human activities, e.g. hunting, land encroachment with industrial, mining, agricultural development, and livestock grazing. Fully aware of those threats, EPRC proposed to establish a protected area in this site. After years of lobbying, and in collaboration with the Forest Inventory and Planning Institute (FIPI) of Hanoi, a wetland nature reserved was successfully established in 2001 and a management board for the NR was later assigned. In the last 20 years, the management board of Van Long Wetland NR with support from EPRC and financial assistance from a number of donors, especially European Zoos, UNDP-SGP and annual investment from the Government of Vietnam, implemented a number of conservation actions to improve protection and habitat rehabilitation. Local communities were identified as part of the problem, but also of the solution. An environmental awareness and education programme was initiated in early 2000s, coupled with buffer-zone livelihoods projects, which helped in changing the locals' attitude into a more environmentally friendly one. Some former hunters changed their mind and became members of community conservation teams. With the establishment of a nature reserve, Van Long became a tourism destination. As the landscape is well protected, wildlife species and habitats recovered, and more and more tourists visit Van Long. The locals now have more job opportunities from tourism. They now value the site and actively protect it as their own asset. The nature reserve is now benefiting both nature and people.