The fight to save Asia's `lost world'

[Guest guest]

12/10/2000

South China Morning Post

10

© Copyright 2000 South China Morning Post Publishers. All Rights

Reserved.

 

If world-renowned naturalist Jane Goodall gets her way, former Khmer

Rouge guerillas will soon be armed - with video cameras instead of guns.

 

The British wildlife campaigner proposed the idea in Phnom Penh last

week, where she was lending some heavyweight support to local

conservationists desperate to contain a distressingly large trade in

wildlife and animal parts.

Dr Goodall, 66, successfully tried the videos-for-guns idea in

Africa, where she spent years living with chimpanzees. Last week she

suggested providing video cameras to hunters living near prime habitats

in Cambodia, such as the Cardamons mountain range in the southwest, and

rewarding them for their footage.

 

Poaching is rife all over the country, but wildlife activists are

most concerned about those active near the prime Cardamons forest, which

has been hailed as Indochina's biggest and most pristine wilderness.

 

Scientists who visited the region early this year described it as a

" lost world " teeming with rare and endangered species. The million

hectares of forest and jungle was locked off for years by Khmer Rouge

guerillas, who laid mines to deter intruders and used the area as a

refuge.

 

Dr Goodall - no stranger to war-torn lands with a thriving trade in

animals - said of her experience in Africa: " We employed local people to

help with the chimpanzee research in western Africa. I said `Why don't

you try employing a hunter and getting him on your research staff?'

After about four years they finally did employ a hunter and said it was

fantastic. On the one hand the hunter became the best field researcher

they had ever had, and, two, the hunter became excited about [saving]

the chimpanzees. "

 

The additional incentive is to give the hunter " a big prize for

really good video footage - so, he's going to police that area himself.

If someone else comes in and starts blasting away at the animals that

he's trying to record on video he's going to get very angry with these

people. It would be an experiment but the guys out there think it may

work " .

 

Wildlife activists in Phnom Penh were delighted to receive Dr

Goodall, welcoming the international attention she would bring, plus her

tips to help slow the slaughter of local species.

 

At a reception for their star guest last week, the project officer of

the Cambodian Tiger Conservation Programme, Hunter Weiler, was

enthusiastic about Dr Goodall's " great idea " .

 

" I think we will pursue it. We've already got these people walking in

the forest and they see a lot of wildlife, " he said.

 

Mr Weiler gave an apt summary of Cambodia's animal crisis: " That

giant sucking sound you hear is all the wildlife in Cambodia being

sucked out into Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and then on to China. "

 

Dr Goodall's five-day trip to Cambodia was the last leg of an amazing

300-day world tour to raise environmental awareness. She came, she said,

to learn about the plight of Cambodia's animals and their natural

habitats. An author of more than a dozen books, she met King Sihanouk,

Prince Norodom Ranarridh and government officials to discuss Cambodia's

efforts to conserve the Cardamons region and fight wildlife trafficking.

 

She also toured Phnom Tamao, Cambodia's only zoo, 50km south of the

capital and home to 84 species of animal - tiger cubs, sun bears and an

array of other creatures confiscated from markets across the country and

wildlife traders.

 

While visiting Mith Samlanh Friends, a centre looking after street

kids in Phnom Penh, Dr Goodall was mobbed when she sat in on a lesson on

animal conservation.

 

" We are trying to introduce our [Roots and Shoots] education

programme - to help make the world a better place for animals, people

and the environment - into the schools and just raise the awareness why

conservation is important, " she said.

 

" We can link kids in Cambodia with kids in other parts of the world.

It can be a very mind-opening experience.

 

" I spoke with Prince Ranarridh [and said] if Cambodia is interested

in developing controlled eco-tourism, I can be helpful.

 

" In Africa, you are dealing with the chimpanzee problem. In Asia, you

are dealing with other animals like the tigers, the black bears. It

doesn't matter if it's an Asian elephant or an Indian elephant. It

doesn't matter if it's a gibbon or a chimpanzee. The problems are the

same . . . it's just the new kind of hunting is not sustainable.

 

" The old tradition is that we hunt for food - we like the taste of

wild meat - but suddenly it's commercial and unsustainable. The problems

are the same in China, the same in Taiwan. All these countries have a

history of eating bush meat.

 

" Cambodia seems to me to compare more to the African countries than

the other Asian countries. Mozambique, in a way, suffered 15 years of a

civil war, [and] Angola suffered about the same length of time as

Cambodia. In those countries you see the same hopeful picking up of

lives and trying to put their culture back together, trying to rebuild

lives themselves. Initially, why would they have any regard for the

environment? Initially, they go rushing in and it's all there. You want

a field? Let's cut the trees down.

 

" I understand that the culture here has been quite animal and

nature-friendly, but that their culture has been shattered. Now the new

desires for material goods and money come in with Western television and

Western aid, which is always dumped in Western form. Your McDonald's

follow and your Nikes follow. "

 

Ty Sokhun, director-general of Cambodia's Department of Forestry and

Wildlife, welcomed Dr Goodall's visit.

 

He said poverty and lack of education were behind the wildlife

depletion. " The people have the goodwill and good intention to protect

their natural habitat, but their stomachs are empty and that is the

reason for continuing hunting.

 

" We could not do the forestry wildlife conservation alone without a

full security programme. I think Dr Goodall's visit is a good sign. She

is a very famous person who could give information about the real

situation in Cambodia.

 

" Without the support from the foreign, international community, we

cannot succeed in our goal. "

 

Cambodia recently became a signatory to the Convention on

International Trade in Endangered Species, which according to the

British Embassy in Phnom Penh listed 46 species of mammal, 74 birds and

13 reptiles.