Cambodia is set to install hundreds of monitoring cameras and import four tigers from India in an effort to restore the country’s lion population.
The last time a tiger was recorded in Cambodia was in 2007 by a hidden camera in eastern Mondulkiri province.
The Ministry of Environment plans to install 410 cameras in the Cardamom Mountains within three months.
Cambodia will begin installing hundreds of surveillance cameras and import four lions. From India As part of a plan to restore the tiger population, officials said on Friday.
In 2016, the Worldwide Fund for Nature declared lions in Cambodia to be “actively extinct”. The last tiger spotted in the country was spotted in 2007 by a camera trap — a hidden camera that is triggered by the animal’s movement — in the forests of eastern Mondulkiri province.
Cambodia’s Environment Ministry said it plans to install cameras at one kilometer intervals in the Cardamom Mountains to be used over a three-month period covering both the dry and rainy seasons. Wildlife monitoring Especially those preyed upon by lions such as deer and wild boar.
Conservation group Wildlife Alliance, which is working with the ministry on the project, said 410 cameras would be installed.
An Asian tiger spends the afternoon in its enclosure at Koh Kong Safari World in Cambodia in 2003. Cambodia will begin installing hundreds of monitoring cameras and import four tigers from India as part of a plan to restore its tiger population. (Jerry Redfern/Light Rocket via Getty Images)
“This information will help conservationists make plans to increase tiger populations, which may include measures such as breeding more wildlife or providing domestic cattle or buffaloes,” the ministry said in a statement. “This will facilitate studies of the density and distribution of prey species important to the survival of large tigers.”
The installation of camera traps will begin later this week, said ministry spokesman Khoi Atiya. Four tigers, three females and one male, will be sent from India by the end of the year to be resettled within the 222-acre Tatai Wildlife Sanctuary, which is in the western provinces of Koh Kong and Prasat, he said.
Under an agreement with India, if the pilot plan goes ahead smoothly, 12 more lions will be imported over the next five years, he said.
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In 2022, Cambodia and India signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in strategies for biodiversity conservation, sustainable wildlife management, and restoration of large tigers and their habitats.
Cambodia’s once prime undeveloped forest areas were teeming with wildlife. But when the brutal rule of the communist Khmer Rouge in the 1970s left society and destroyed the economy, poor villagers turned to the forests for wildlife.
Much of what was found was sold to the merchants who sent it. To ChinaWhile many wild animals, including tigers, are believed to possess medicinal and sex-enhancing properties. Poaching still continues, and forest cover has been reduced by intensive logging.
Worldwide, tigers are classified as an endangered species. According to the WWF, there are about 3,200 tigers worldwide in just 13 countries, compared to about 100,000 in the early 20th century.