Yahoo News 4 Apr 08;
The populations of seven species of rare water birds have recovered significantly in Cambodia's Tonle Sap lake due to a program that employs former hunters as park rangers, conservationists said Thursday.
A report by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society found the populations have increased by as much as 20 times for some of the species since 2001, when the program started.
The findings mark a "success story" in efforts to protect the bird colonies from poachers, said Noeu Bonheur, the Cambodian Environment Ministry's deputy director of the Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve.
"It is definitely exciting news that we should be proud of," he said.
His office and the WCS have worked together for several years on a conservation project at Prek Toal, a flooded region on the northwestern edge of the Tonle Sap.
The lake is Southeast Asia's largest freshwater reservoir, which can expand to 12,000 square kilometers (4,630 square miles) at the peak of the rainy season and recede to about 3,000 square kilometers (1,160 square miles) in the dry season. It is rich in biodiversity and provides a breeding ground for many species of birds and fish.
The WCS report, released earlier this week, said the Prek Toal bird colonies hold the largest — and in some cases the only — breeding populations in Southeast Asia of the seven globally threatened large water bird species.
The species are the spot-billed pelican, milky stork, painted stork, lesser adjutant, greater adjutant, black-headed ibis and the Oriental darter. There were over 20,000 birds in 2007, compared to 5,000 in 2001, the report said.
All seven species are listed as "threatened or near-threatened" by the World Conservation Union, Tom Clements, a WCS technical adviser in Cambodia, said in an e-mail Thursday.
"Prek Toal is the most important large water bird breeding colony in Southeast Asia. In some cases, Prek Toal supports up to 30 percent of the global population," Clements said.
When the colonies there were discovered in the late 1990s, they were threatened with extinction as a result of villagers' rampant harvesting of eggs and chicks, the report said.
But during the past seven years, a colony protection and monitoring program has resulted in a gradual decline in poaching incidents, allowing the birds to stage "remarkable comebacks," it said.
The program employs some 30 park rangers, many of whom are former poachers, who work in shifts around the clock to monitor the bird populations.
"The approach was extremely effective," Clements said.
He said some of the hunters who were not employed did try to collect the birds' eggs and chicks in the early years of the project, "but since 2004 this threat has effectively ceased."
Former hunters help save rare birds in Cambodia: report
Yahoo News 4 Apr 08;
One-time hunters recruited to a conservation project have helped threatened bird populations in Cambodia's Great Lake recover, according to a report Friday.
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) report said populations of some of the bird species had increased 20-fold since the project began in 2001 at Tonle Sap Lake, known as the Great Lake.
The project by the WCS and Cambodia's environment ministry employed about 30 former hunters and egg collectors as park rangers tasked with providing 24-hour protection for breeding colonies, the report said.
The plan was to boost the populations of the spot-billed pelican, milky stork, painted stork, lesser adjutant, greater adjutant, black-headed ibis and the Oriental darter.
The waterbird colonies were first discovered in the mid-1990s. At the time, the birds were threatened with extinction because of villagers' rampant harvesting of eggs and chicks, the report said.
"When first discovered, the colonies were heavily threatened by annual harvesting of the eggs and chicks by nearby villagers, mainly for trade and local consumption," the report said.
But the populations of the birds have increased from a total of 2,500 breeding pairs in 2001 to more than 10,000 pairs in 2007.
The colonies include the largest, and in some cases, the only breeding populations for the waterbirds in Southeast Asia, according to the report.
Tonle Sap lake is Southeast Asia's largest freshwater reservoir, which can expand to 12,000 square kilometres at the peak of the rainy season and recedes to about 3,000 square kilometres in the dry season.
The lake is rich in biodiversity and offers a breeding place for many species of birds and fish.
