South China Morning Post, Saturday, July 22, 2000

Poachers swap sides in bid to halt tiger's decline

By Kay Johnson

Phnom Penh -- Criticised for years for doing little to stop its active

wildlife trade, Cambodia has launched a last-ditch effort to save its

dwindling tiger population by encouraging hunters to track down poachers

instead.

And among the first to be signed up for the campaign is a man accused

recently of killing a rare Indochinese tiger with a land mine.

More than 50 park rangers are being recruited for two new programmes to

patrol areas where tigers are still believed to be living. Such drastic

measures are necessary or the Indochinese tiger will soon be hunted into

extinction, according to Sawanna Gauntlett of the international

conservation group WildAid, one of two bodies which have joined forces

with the Government in a bid to halt the tiger's decline.

"The wildlife trade is bleeding this country dry," Ms Gauntlett said.

"We are very concerned there will be no tiger population within two to

three years."

Nobody knows exactly how many tigers are left in Cambodia, but even the

most optimistic of estimates puts the population at only a few hundred.

Anywhere from 50 to 100 of the big cats are killed each year for their

prized pelts and their bones, according to the Cat Action Treasury

(CAT), the second pressure group helping to run the ranger programmes.

Bagging a tiger can bring a hunter as much as US$1,000, big money in an

impoverished country where the average wage is only about US$300 a year.

Such money is hard to resist, but CAT's Hunter Weiler is confident the

ranger scheme can work. "We're going to recruit the best of these

hunters. They know the forests better than anyone," Mr Weiler said.

The first person to be recruited for CAT's ranger force is Lain Sothy, a

33-year-old farmer in Mondulkiri, who was arrested in June after

admitting to killing a tiger using a land mine.

Instead of being sent to jail, however, Mr Lain Sothy was given a stern

"re-education" lecture and then offered a job that pays US$50 per month,

plus US$2 for each day he spends looking for hunters or spreading the

conservation word.

It might seem a bit like letting a fox guard the hen-house, but both Mr

Weiler and WildAid's Steven Galster said such programmes have been

successful in Thailand and in Russia, turning experienced tiger poachers

into tiger protectors.

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