Hunters and Hunted

… Unable to effectively police the Cardamoms alone, the Cambodian government partners itself with several international NGOs. The forests directly north of Highway 48 arc patrolled with the help of Wildlife Alliance.

Beginning in 2002 with two ranger stations, Wildlife Alliance now operates six outposts in the Southern Cardamoms- a 680,000-hectare area known as the Southwest Elephant Corridor. With a mandate to enforce Cambodia’s Forestry Law (2002), each station is manned by a Wildlife Alliance station advisor, a Cambodian station assistant advisor, two Forestry Administration officials (Cambodia’s forestry Administration, or FA, technically oversees all Wildlife Alliance ranger station) and ten armed Royal Gendarmerie of Cambodia military policemen (MPs).

Wildlife Alliance builds maintains and outfits its own stations. In addition to this, it provides its FA officials and MPs, with allowances, bonuses and per diem payments that can equal as much as five times their meagre government salaries. According to Wildlife Alliance CEO Suwanna Gauntlett, providing forest rangers with attractive wages is the first step to overcoming corruption. …

Wildlife Alliance’s conservation efforts in the southern Cardamom Mountains are multipronged. In addition to pioneering reforestation and environmental education programmers, it operates Community Based Ecotourism (CBET) projects in the communes of Trapeang Roung and Chi Phat to provide loggers and poachers with alternative (and legal) sources of income. …

“It is tiring to only work on the surface,” Eduard Lefter, Wildlife Alliance’s Southern Cardamoms Forest Protection Programmer Technical Advisor, says. But by making the illegal wildlife and timber trades unprofitable through constant ambushes, raids and seizures, Lefter hopes to convince traders to pursue different lines of work. …

With so much at stake, illegal wildlife and timber traders employ a system of bribery, intimidation and violence to secure their business interests. Paid informants dot the landscape around the Stung Proat station, notifying the rangers’ every move. Rangers have been known to take bribe for information, while others have been brutally attacked while off-duty.

Wildlife Alliance’s few paid collaborators live in a state of fear. One such collaborator, Hong note disappeared without a trace after providing information that led to the seizure of a $10.000 ocean-going boar loaded with $15.000 worth of rosewood. “It is very difficult for us to find information,” Hong say. “Sometimes they are killed.” …