Voice of America, Friday, July 21, 2000

CAMBODIA - TIGERS

By Kay Johnson

PHNOM PENH--Cambodia's government has launched (Friday) a new forest

patrol program aimed at protecting the country's dwindling number of

tigers. Wildlife experts say drastic action against poachers is needed

or the once-common big cat will be hunted into extinction. Kay Johnson

reports from Phnom Penh.

Nobody knows exactly how many tigers are left in Cambodia. Even the most

optimistic estimate puts the population at only a few hundred. But what

studies do show is the fast rate at which tigers are disappearing from

Cambodia. Anywhere from 50 to 100 of the big cats are killed each year

for their prized pelts and for their bones, which are sold for high

prices and used in Chinese medicine.

Killing a tiger can bring a hunter as much as a thousand US dollars -

big money in impoverished Cambodia, where the average wage is only about

300 dollars per year.

But if the hunting keeps up, Cambodia's tiger population could be

completely wiped out within three years, according to Suwanna Gauntlett

of the conservation group Wild Aid.

I would say that they are near extinction. It doesn't matter how many

are left when you look at how many are being hunted. The poaching is

rampant and these animals need urgent protection in the field - anti-

poaching, deterring, patrolling.

Protecting tigers is exactly what Cambodia's new program intends to do.

Wild Aid and the Cambodian environment ministry will train 30 park

rangers to patrol the Bokor National Park. Unlike other rangers in

Cambodia, they will be armed and given authority to arrest poachers.

Wild Aid says it also intends to follow the example of another

conservation group in Cambodia, the Cat Action Treasury, which is

recruiting rangers from among the hunters themselves. It may seem

strange, but it's true that the hunters know the forests and the tigers'

habits well. By giving them a salary and training them to track down

other hunters instead of tigers, conservationists hope to turn the

poachers into the big cats' protectors.

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