DAVID BIGGS managing a rebel landscape: CONSERVATION, PIONEERS, AND THE REVOLUTIONARY PAST IN THE U MINH FOREST, VIETNAM DURING THE SPRING dry season of 2002, a series of fires in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam destroyed over 2,700 hectares of cajuput (Melaleuca cajuputi) forest in U Minh Thuong National Park. The burning forest was one of the last intact remnants of mixed cajuput and coastal mangrove forest that before 1900 covered over a million hectares and was one of the largest such ecosystems in the world. For two months during the blaze, several thousand army troops, volunteer police, and forest rangers worked around the clock to contain fires in the park and nearby forest plantations. Temperatures in the center of the fire reached several thousand degrees as the dried peat layer ignited, resulting in occasional fireballs roiling skyward. The firefighters’ primary response to the fire involved pumping seawater from the coast to fill canals dug as firebreaks, thus causing further damage to the park’s mostly freshwater ecosystems. 1 In total, over eight thousand hectares of land in the region burned in these fires, including many forest plantations. The fires reduced the protected core zone to approximately two thousand hectares, and it is doubtful that many highly endangered, endemic species of birds, reptiles, fish, and plants will survive. 2 The fires captured national attention, not only because of their intensity but also because the area was home to one of the first southern bases for the Viet Minh (1941-1954) and later an important base of operations for the National Liberation Front (NLF) (1960-1975). Many top southern leaders in the Vietnamese Communist Party, including former Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet and Party Secretary Le Duan spent time in the forest, building a political and military infrastructure that after 1945 expanded a network of guerrilla bases, hospitals,