Cardamom National Park, Cambodia

Introduction

The Cardamom Mountains. The name evokes images of fervid green hills enveloped in mist, full of wild creatures that roam in the forest’s gloaming. That’s not far from the reality; Cardamom National Park and its surrounding mountains contain Southeast Asia’s largest surviving rainforest, a vast, exceptionally diverse wilderness which remains mostly unexplored.

One might imagine that the Cardamom Mountains still harbor the ghosts of the Khmer Rouge, who left this forest just over two decades ago. In the uneasy peace that followed the Cambodian Civil War, the Cardamom Mountains suffered rampant logging, poaching, and slash-and-burn agriculture as people struggled to find their way in this post-conflict era. The areas that survived that period, however, remain one of Southeast Asia’s most pristine expanses of wilderness.

Two hundred million hectares of rainforest once covered southern Asia, but only about 10 million hectares are left. One-fifth of that remaining forest is in Cambodia.

The Prek Khlang Yai Delta is the gateway to Cardamom National Park on the Cambodian border with Thailand.

Natural Heritage

Cardamom National Park was gazetted in 2016, owing to the work of our partner, Wildlife Alliance.

The park consists of over 800,000 hectares of dense monsoon forest, melaleuca wetlands, mangroves, and a vast network of estuaries and rivers that course across the mountain slopes and into the Gulf of Thailand.

The Cardamom rainforest has the greatest watershed value of any forest in Cambodia, with a staggering rainfall of 3,500-4,500mm per year due to its dense evergreen forest cover and its position along the Gulf. Protecting this continuous forest canopy and the flow of water from the forest to the coast is a conservation priority for Cambodia.

In the Cardamoms, baby elephants are often the victims of poacher's snares intended for adult animals.

This fragile forest conceals a menagerie of endangered wildlife species, including Malayan sun bears, elephants, gibbons, clouded leopards, Indian civets, banteng, dholes, gaur, and Sunda pangolins. In all, the park hosts more than 60 globally threatened animals and 17 globally threatened trees, many endemic to Cambodia. Here, one of the largest protected wild elephant populations in Southeast Asia rambles through one of Asia’s last unfragmented elephant corridors. In the rivers swim the exceedingly rare Irrawaddy dolphin, fewer than 100 of which remain in the world. Alongside those dolphins live some of the last populations on earth of Siamese crocodiles.

Sun bears are one of the threatened species that call the Cardamom Mountains home.

Though tigers have not been seen here for some time, tiger reintroduction to Cambodia was identified as a priority in the Cambodia Tiger Action Plan and was recently endorsed by the Cambodian Prime Minister Samdach Akka Moha Senabdeiy Techo Hun Sen. The Ministry of Environment, responsible for managing Cardamom National Park, is also supportive of tiger reintroduction into the Cardamom Rainforest Landscape in the coming years.

Clouded leopards and other large mammals are under attack in the Cardamoms.

Saving Cardamom National Park

Despite its new protected status, illegal land clearing and wildlife poaching continue to threaten this park.

Cambodia faces some of the highest deforestation rates of any country in the world: over 15% of its forest has been cleared over the past 10 years.

Thousands of wildlife snares, which conservationists call “walls of death” for their ability to create fatal barriers to wildlife, are confiscated every year in the Cardamom region. In the depths of the unexplored forest, such activities are difficult to stop without daily aerial and satellite monitoring. Further, because of its highly desirable real estate location, industrial and community-level land grabbing and wildlife poaching continue to threaten Cardamom’s biodiversity on a daily basis.

A Cardamom National Park ranger installs cellular trailcams.

To protect this park, Global Conservation, Wildlife Alliance, and the Ministry of Environment are deploying new technologies, including command and control, cellular trailcams, aerial surveillance and targeted ranger patrols for increasing the effectiveness of forest and wildlife protection. Wildlife Alliance builds rangers’ professional capacity and provides full support for their livelihoods. This enables them to focus completely on their duties and creates a culture of zero tolerance for corruption.

Global Park Defense provides critical technology and training for rangers and Wildlife Alliance teams.

Effective and well-managed patrolling is vital to stop commercial poaching, often involving deadly snares laid on the forest floor to catch wild animals on their way to drink in the rivers. Effective enforcement also deters illegal logging operations and forest clearing for agriculture and other land uses. It's absolutely critical that surveillance, patrolling and law enforcement are conducted on a daily basis.

Rangers remove hundreds of illegal snares, which capture wildlife indiscriminately.

We are determined not to let this forest disappear, the way that 95% of Asia’s rainforests already have.

Our rangers patrol 24/7 across 600,000 hectares of the Cardamom Rainforest Landscape, protecting the homes of elephants, clouded leopards, and gibbons so that this vast wilderness can remain wild.

Partners in Conservation

Wildlife Alliance

Wildlife Alliance is the leader in direct protection of forests and wildlife in tropical Cambodia. They specialize in on-the-ground interventions with government rangers and local communities, directly addressing the causes of deforestation and the illegal wildlife trade.

Wildlife Alliance helps recruit rangers, train them, and equip them. Rangers are taught how to conduct professional law enforcement, strengthen legal procedures through the judiciary system, and report large land-grabbing cases to local and central government. Rangers also learn how to document crimes for government interventions: all cases are documented with precise GIS data, photographic evidence, and detailed history of legal offenses.

Cardamom National Park rangers and Wildlife Alliance team members patrol the park, working together to protect the forest and wildlife.

Thirteen rural communities surround the perimeter of the Cardamom National Park. New community-led organizations, ecotourism, community rangers, and environmental education are increasing interest in protection and have already substantially raised the standard of living for participating communities. Wildlife Alliance assists these communities in developing livelihoods that do not damage the rainforest: either sustainable agriculture, ecotourism, or development of family-run small businesses. At the same time, community members are rallied to re-plant lost forest cover by enriching the soil and planting indigenous tree species. The goal is to help the forest watershed recover and replenish water reserves in the village water wells.

SMART patrols respond to threats in the park using speedboats.

Over 5,000 people in the area have benefited from development of sustainable jobs, 8 communities have had their land zoned for alternative livelihoods, and six ranger patrol stations are conducting over 2,500 patrols per year.

Wildlife Alliance is also working on long-term sustainable financing for forest protection in the landscape through developing carbon credit revenues from the Southern Cardamom Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) project.

Cambodia Ministry of Environment

Cambodia Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

Deforestation threatens wildlife like this hornbill in the Cardamom Mountains.