Hope and Horror in Cambodia’s Virachey National Park
Rare wildlife — and the poachers who target it — caught on camera.
By Greg McCann
Virachey National Park’s location is both a blessing and a curse. Carved out of a chunk of mountains that demarcates the Cambodian, Lao, and Vietnamese borders and terminating in a wisp of terrain known as the “Dragon’s Tail,” the wildlife of this beleaguered and beautiful park has managed to cling to existence thanks almost exclusively to its rugged terrain. Many Cambodian protected areas lay on relatively flat land that makes it all too easy for poachers and loggers to get around in, but that ease of navigation ends at Virachey, which is actually the southern flank of a westward-stretching arm of the Annamite Cordillera. On the Vietnamese and Lao sides of the borders with Virachey the mountains and jungles spread onward, echoing the morning cry of gibbons and the call of the hornbills that always impress visitors to Virachey. This intriguing topography is also a problem because Lao and Vietnamese poachers find it all too easy to sneak across the wild border areas to set snares and shoot rare species like douc langurs out of the trees.
Indeed, Vietnamese and Lao poaching inside Virachey appears to be on the increase, as Habitat ID’s camera traps are now showing. While locals also poach, they do not, according to our camera trap records, seem to be as well-armed, determined, and well-organized as the Vietnamese, who have long made illegal border crossings into Cambodia via Laos and Vietnam to hunt out the last of the tigers and elephants. Local people are allowed to enter the park to collect Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) and to fish and even hunt non-threatened species such as wild pig and barking deer. In fact, the locals caught on our film appear positively benevolent compared to the eerily determined Vietnamese poachers stalking the remote Virachey mountains in the dark of night.
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An elusive Binturong with two cubs ambles by a camera trap near the Lao border. This species is not often recorded in Cambodia, but it can still be found in Virachey.
This hardcore poacher has been photographed on two separate cameras one month apart. He lives in the forest days away from the nearest village, determined to find his quarry, whatever that may be. Poachers are serious criminals and should be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent by law.