52 Weeks to Save the Cardamoms: Suwanna's Blog--Week 1
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 12:07PM 
Our biggest challenge ever: to obtain legal protection for 1 million acres of rainforest
As founder and CEO of Wildlife Alliance, I am fighting to protect the Cardamom Mountains: a critical rainforest that stands as one of Asia’s last elephant corridors, holds one of Southeast Asia’s most important watersheds and is home to some of the world’s most extraordinary and endangered species. This has been my fight since the day I arrived in Cambodia over 10 years ago. Now, in my 11th year here, the final piece of the puzzle is nearly within reach: one final piece of legislation that would preserve this amazing eco-system for future generations. Join me this year in my fight to get this legislation on the books: to Save the Cardamoms in 52 Weeks.
Together with our ranger patrol teams on the ground, I have put my life on the line for more than ten years to fight for these two million acres of jungle and the people and wild animals who call the Cardamoms home. Day after day, rescuing wildlife, stopping traffickers, providing sustainable livelihoods to former poachers and loggers, reforesting land that was slashed and burned, Wildlife Alliance has saved one of Asia’s last seven elephant corridors—at least for now.
On patrol with our forest ranger team
Our biggest challenge is directly ahead: only half of these two million acres has legal status as a national park or protected forest. Protection for the remaining one million acres must be granted this year to stop industry from gaining land concessions in the Cardamoms. We have just submitted this request to the government and we are finally on track to start drafting this critical legislation. However, success depends on acceptance by many ministries and departments in which individuals surely have private interests that conflict with this legislation. Will we be able to put the missing piece of the puzzle in place—legislation that keeps industry from bulldozing one million acres of the elephant corridor?
The elephant corridor is a large piece of prime real estate and everyone wants a piece of it—private companies most of all! Last year, we were able to obtain the cancellation of a massive titanium mine that was planned right in the middle of the Cardamoms. This mine would have stripped thousands of acres of rainforest, decimated wildlife habitat and destroyed entire villages’ livelihoods.
Overruling the titanium mine was a great victory but requests for forestland never stop: 6 Chinese companies followed shortly behind requesting licenses to bulldoze 170,000 acres of forestland for industrial plantations, followed by an Australian company seeking to establish a 13,000 acre banana plantation and just last week 3 other companies requested another 93,000 acres for sugar cane. Without legal protection for the Cardamoms, we will continue to take two steps forward and one step back.
Corporations are eating up tropical rainforests everywhere, in the Amazon, the Congo basin, and in other countries in Southeast Asia. Our tropical rainforests are being systematically destroyed. This is causing drought and diminished rainfall, not only in these specific locations, but worldwide. Wildlife Alliance must get this legislation passed and preserve as much tropical rainforest as possible before it is too late.
In Cambodia to date, we’ve been able to obtain the cancellation of 33 corporate requests for industrial crops and mining licenses, and have stopped thousands of uncontrolled grabbing attempts on rainforest land. This means that we have directly stopped the bulldozing of rainforest twice the size of Yellowstone Park! With all of these private interests stacked against us, this last piece of the puzzle will undoubtedly be the hardest. But if we don’t try, what could be lost might come at too high a cost for us all. That’s what Wildlife Alliance is all about: getting the job done despite the odds. Who said saving a rainforest was impossible? Join me here each week as I fight to Save the Cardamoms in 52 Weeks.
Reader Comments (2)
I think the work you are doing is amazing and essential. I hope that the Cambodian government will start to see that the national park land will be much more precious to thier future, economy, tourism, wellbeing and wildlife in it's natural state and not as a commodity to be sold off to investors and 'developed'.
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