'Drastic' Declines in Cambodia’s Endangered Wildlife
By: Aun Chhengpor, Malis Tum
Deep in the deciduous tropical forests on the Srepok River banks, Bun Tropin has aroutine as he stations himself at the Mereuch Base for the armed forest rangers ofCambodia’s Ministry of the Environment.
The base has a long history of combat dating to the pivotal 1954 Battle of Dien BienPhu and the Vietnam War, given its location at the midpoint of the Ho Chi MinhTrail, the route communist-led North Vietnam used for sending weapons,manpower, ammunition and other supplies to their supporters in South Vietnam.
But a film produced in 1951 by American zoologist Charles Wharton captured imagesof armies of graceful banteng and other hoofed mammals, or ungulates, thatoccupied the area in such numbers that they seem to appear in every frame.
Today, the Mereuch Base serves as a staging area for protecting one of Cambodia’slast remaining natural reserves.
In mid-January, two Voice of America journalists received rare access to tourMereuch and the sanctuary’s two other bases in a well-choreographed and escortedtrip that included about 30 other reporters. Guides told them to not wander becauseof cluster bombs and other unexploded ordnance in the area.
But Bun Tropin, 27, a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) biodiversity research assistant,knows his way around the restricted sanctuaries in Mondulkiri province because hemanages more than 200 camera traps as part of the conservation group’s effort tocapture evidence of the presence of wildlife.
Bun Tropin and his team guided the journalists through chest-high grasses to checkthe cameras installed through the areas.
“When you trek like this, you hardly see any of those bantengs, elephants, tigers andothers,” the soft-spoken Bun Tropin told VOA Khmer. “But each time I spot them oncamera, I am always wowed. Each time, I just could not take my eyes off them.”
Drastic declines
WWF Cambodia released a report on January 15 saying the ungulate populations intwo sanctuaries – Srepok and the neighboring Phnom Prich – had seen a drastic 10-year decline.
The estimated banteng population plummeted by 72%, from about 3,013 in 2010 tojust 856 in 2020, within both sanctuaries, which have a combined area of 5,955square kilometers – slightly larger than Brunei Darussalam.
The population of red muntjacs, also known as barking deer, had declined to about3,350 in 2020, half the number that had been found in 2010.
“The poaching threat, particularly in the form of snaring, in the two protected sitesin the [easter plain landscape] has grown by two orders of magnitude during thismonitoring period, indicating that the current level of protected area managementand law enforcement efforts are no longer sufficient to tackle the threatseffectively,” reads the 86-page report covering the years 2010-2020 that wasendorsed by the Ministry of Environment.
Between the late 1960s and the early 1990s, Cambodia’s total banteng population fellby 95%, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
In the neighboring Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary, the Wildlife Conservation Society(WCS), another conservation group, also documented a dramatic drop in ungulatepopulation over the past 10 years.
"Five out of six monitored ungulate species either show significant populationdeclines or have been assessed by experts as being in decline within [Keo SeimaWildlife Sanctuary]," the WCS said in the report released in September 2020.
Seng Teak, director of WWF Cambodia, said the findings were “concerning,” citingthe ongoing hazards of habitat losses, poaching and snares.
“If the snares remain throughout in the forest, there’s a chance forests of the futurewon’t have any wildlife,” he told VOA Khmer.
A regulatory overhaul introduced in 2016 was designed to distinguish between theoverlapping authority of Cambodia’s Ministry of Agriculture’s ForestryAdministration and the Ministry of Environment has been implemented.
The Forestry Administration oversees economic land concession planning. TheMinistry of Environment protects vast biodiverse areas and wildlife sanctuaries withan embattled crew of armed and uniformed rangers; there are only 51 EnvironmentMinistry rangers in the two preserves, and 1,200 rangers throughout Cambodia. Theirnumbers are unlikely to increase soon due to austerity measures imposed ascombatting the coronavirus pandemic consumes the national budget.
Yet the mountainous province is preparing to welcome a new airport investment,more tourists and more new residents to areas that need protection.
Powerful business interests
The London-based Environment Investigation Agency found rampant deforestationwas masked by powerful business interests, according to a 2018 case study. It foundtimber logged in Cambodia’s northeast, the Phnom Prich Wildlife Sanctuary, wasillegally exported to Vietnam.
“EIA investigations between September 2017 and March 2018 uncovered illegallogging operations on an unprecedented scale within the wildlife sanctuary, alongwith large-scale corruption implicating various elements of the CambodianGovernment,” the report found.
Disgraced logging tycoon Soeng Sam Ol was arrested in 2019 with five seniorenvironment, and forestry officials in the province were summoned for questioningby a national-level ad hoc investigatory team. Among them were Keo Sopheak, headof the provincial Department of Environment, and Paet Pheaktra, director of theSrepok Wildlife Sanctuary.
The five were later cleared of any wrongdoing.
“Strict legal enforcement”
Paet Pheaktra told VOA Khmer during the press tour that “strict legal enforcement”is the best way to protect endangered wildlife.
“Implementing the law will be an effective method,” Paet Pheaktra said as heshowed VOA reporters the snares used by the poachers. “People will respect if we usethe laws accordingly.”
He said “considerable” number of snares remain in the forests. He blamed bothVietnamese from the east of the sanctuaries and the local people who lived on theedge of the protected areas as key actors in harvesting the wildlife in the areas.
“High-tech snares are mostly imported from the neighboring country [Vietnam],”said Paet Pheaktra, reflecting the traditional animosity between Vietnam andCambodia.
“If everyone is committed, I think it’s not too late to save the wildlife,” he said,adding that to save the forests, “it will be too late if you wait until the next 10 or 15years.”
WWF Cambodia is introducing a number of programs to assist the rangers and thenearby communities to find alternatives to logging and poaching as a bid to save theungulates and other endangered species living in the two sanctuaries.
That includes convincing the locals to stop poaching, a tall order given they consumemost of the animals.
Phan Phonna, 49, a mother of seven moved to the area in 1994 from her homeprovince of Tboung Khmun. At the time, forests and wildlife were abundant, but thatis no longer true.
“We choose to raise pigs and poultry to make a living instead of consuming wildmeats in fears of health dangers,” she said
“You cannot just go there as they monitor your activities all over the jungles,”Phonna added.
“Endless job”
Seng Teak, who heads WWF Cambodia, remains hopeful, said the pace of loss among ungulates has slowed over the past three years. He credits conservation efforts, saying
those coupled with combatting of forestry and wildlife crimes will lead to revivals of currently endangered species.
“Wildlife need a quiet habitat free of snares, guns, chainsaws and other types of intrusion,” he said. “They need a safe haven so that they can reproduce fast.”
Back in Mereuch, Bun Tropin sees no end to his mission – documenting and preserving the ungulates in both north-eastern sanctuaries.
“It is just an endless job,” Bun Tropin said. “It will keep going and new things will keep coming up – new species, new evolvement -- and that requires more follow-up.”
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