Title
Conservation success of Prek Toal Core Area, Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve, Cambodia
Author(s)
Kheng, L.
Published
2015
Publisher
Cambodian Journal of Natural History
Abstract
The Tonle Sap is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia and was designated as a Biosphere Reserve in 1997. The Prek Toal Core Area (21,342 ha) is one of the most important core areas in the biosphere reserve. It supports the largest breeding colonies of large waterbirds in Southeast Asia and is the lake’s most productive fishery lot. However, the biodiversity of the Prek Toal Core Area was fragile for years, despite environmental education and awareness-raising initiatives by the Ministry of Environment (MoE). Thousands of waterbird chicks and eggs were collected during the 1990s and waterbird colonies were continually destroyed by the fi shing lot owners in that period. Since 2001, however, with financial and technical support from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), MoE rangers have undertaken constant watches of the bird colonies, provided protection for the main streams and implemented SMART. The protection of waterbird colonies and main streams in the core area have resulted in dramatic increases of threatened bird species and fi sh stocks, improving ecosystem health and benefitting many other species. All key species of large waterbirds in Prek Toal have stable or increasing populations. With government support, local communities actively participate in the conservation programme and ecotourism and they in turn have received benefits from alternative income generation through conservation and ecotourism.

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PUB15554