Cambodia declares new national park, plans to reintroduce

tigers
1st June 2016 / Morgan Erickson-Davis
The Cambodian government announced the creation of Southern Cardamom National Park earlier this
month.

The move grants protection to more than a million acres of rainforest, and joins a group of
protected areas totaling 4.5 million acres.

The Cardamom Mountains are home to many threatened species, including Asian elephants and
Siamese crocodiles.

Tigers have been absent in Cambodia since 2007. The government, together with an NGO
working in the region, is preparing to reintroduce them to Southern Cardamom National Park.

Over the past 15 years, Cambodia has lost enough tree cover to fill the U.S. state of Connecticut as forests
are logged and agroindustries clear land for rubber and other commodity plantations. But conservation in
the country scored a win earlier this month with the debut of Southern Cardamom National Park, issuing
in stronger protections for over a million acres of one of the Southeast Asias last great rainforests.
The new national park is located in the Cardamom Mountains that fill the southwestern portion
Cambodia. In their lush, montane forests live a trove of wildlife, including 2,000 known plant species and
28 threatened animal species. Endangered Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) and pileated
gibbons(Hylobates pileatus) call the Cardamoms home, as do 75 percent of the global population of the
critically endangered Siamese crocodile ((Crocodylus siamensis) and all the worlds river terrapins
(Batagur affinis), which are hovering on the brink of extinction.
Southern Cardamom National Park acts as the final piece in a network of protected areas that now affords
protection to nearly 4.5 million acres. Declared through sub-decree by the Cambodian government on
May 9, the park is the end result of a campaign spearheaded by NGOs Wildlife Alliance and Rainforest
Trust in response to habitat threats to the area.
Asian elephants are listed by the IUCN as Endangered, and surveys indicate they have declined 50
percent over the past three generations. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.

According to Wildlife Alliance (WA), the region was slated 36 times for conversion to agricultural land
and mines. However, conservationists successfully fended off each advance.
Although land use changes have been affecting Cambodias forests Cambodia has one of the fastest
deforestation rates in the world in recent years the Cardamom mountains have been fairly well
protected thanks to Wildlife Alliances presence on the ground since 2002 with a ranger force and regular
daily patrolling, said WA CEO and founder Suwanna Gauntlett.
But before 2002 was a different story, according to Gauntlett. She told Mongabay that there was no ranger
force in the region when WA first arrived, and that land prospectors and hunters were destroying habitat
and the wildlife within. The overarching cause of this was a new highway connecting Cambodia to
Thailand that had been built through 100 kilometers of rainforest.
As we arrived in the crisis area, 12 tigers and 37 elephants had been slaughtered in just a few months and
the rainforest was up in flames with 37 to 45 forest fires visible from the freeway any given day,
Gauntlett said. Despite arrest of the most sought after tiger hunter in the country in 2004 by our rangers,
and seizure of several tiger traffickers with tiger parts from 2002-2006, it soon appeared that our arrival
and efforts to stop tiger poaching came too late. The tiger population had already been decimated by 20
years of civil war with no attention to anti-poaching law enforcement.
After they arrived on the scene, Wildlife Alliance, working in concert with Cambodias Forestry
Administration, established a ranger presence in the southern Cardamoms that patrols the region to keep
illegal logging and poaching at bay.
Gauntlett told Mongabay that in addition to working on the ground, WA took their fight to the government
to try to extinguish economic land concessions that were eating up more and more of the regions forest.
Economic land concessions (ELCs) are long-term leases of large areas of land granted by the government
to agroindustry companies. The companies then use the land for such things as establishing plantations,
pasture, or factories that process agricultural goods. Beginning with the 2001 passage of Cambodias
Land Law, ELCs have spread throughout the country, attracting significant criticism from individuals and
organizations that say they have facilitated land grabbingand the clearing of biologically valuable
wilderness even in protected areas.
Wildlife Alliances efforts paid off, with the revocation of many ELCs destined for the Cardamoms;
among them a titanium mine, a banana plantation, cattle pasture, and a new city, all planned smack in the
middle of the rainforest, Gauntlett said. In total, she added, WAs advocacy campaign saved an area of
forest two-thirds the size of Yellowstone National Park from industrial conversion.
Thanks to this ranger presence, coupled with Wildlife Alliance advocacy at central government level, we
were able to maintain continuous forest cover over the last 14 years and avoid fragmentation of the South
West Elephant Corridor, one of Asias last remaining un-fragmented elephant corridors.
But long-term preservation is hard to come by without official protection, which the area lacked until last
month.
We attempted several times to obtain legal protection status for the Southern Cardamoms since 2011
without success, Gauntlett said. When we presented the area again in 2014, the Cambodian government

was more receptive. After months of painstaking work on the ground by Wildlife Alliance and all levels
of community and government to re-measure land allocated to communities that needed to be excluded
from the national park boundaries, the national park boundary map was finally agreed upon by all parties.
This resulted in the May 2016 declaration of the Southern Cardamoms National Park.
Data from Global Forest Watch show Cambodia lost nearly 18 percent of its tree cover between 2001 and
2014 giving it one of the worlds highest deforestation rates. In comparison, the region comprising
Southern Cardamom National Park has lost 3 percent of its tree cover. However, its annual rate of tree
cover loss has increased in recent years. Its new status as a national park will afford its forest greater
protection from threats like logging.
In 2012, Cambodia issued a moratorium on new ELCs. However, many of those that had already been
established were allowed to continue operating. Among them is an ELC that directly abuts a small portion
of the new national park. However, Gauntlett isnt worried about it.
The ELC that abuts the Southern Cardamom National Park has been diligently respecting their allocated
boundaries and are not clearing forest outside, she said. Wildlife Alliance has had a good working
relationship with this ELC since 2004.
As for what happens next, the organization is currently working to get Southern Cardamom ready for the
reestablishment of a tiger population. Considered functionally extinct in Cambodia, no tigers have been
observed in the Cardamoms since 2007. But through its Tiger Action Plan, the Cambodian government is
preparing to bring some over from neighboring countries. To help achieve this goal, WA is planning on
opening three more ranger stations and hiring more rangers to help protect new tigers. Theyre also taking
a thorough look at the parks habitat to make sure theres enough food to sustain them.
Wildlife Alliance is currently conducting a Systematic Camera Survey in the Southern Cardamoms to
analyze and evaluate presence of sufficient tiger prey base in the area in preparation for future potential
reintroduction, Gauntlett said.