Forest Rangers

Wildlife Alliance operates six ranger stations, and supports several others throughout the Southern Cardamom Mountains, Cambodia’s largest protected forest.  Our work protects the forest from illegal logging, poaching, and forest fires. We train and equip rangers to regularly conduct foot, riverboat, and aerial patrols, remove snares, confiscate illegal timber and chainsaws, dismantle illegal saw mills, and remove illegal charcoal kilns and poachers’ camps.

Our rangers have successfully reduced poaching, forest fires, illegal logging, illegal charcoal production, land encroachment, and logging concessions. They have also cracked down on illegal forest operations such as the distillation of tree root bark to create safrole oil, used in the manufacture of methamphetamines and the drug, ecstasy.

Our work discouraging the production of safrole has caught the attention of the US Drug Enforcement Agency which recently renovated one of our ranger stations to help us continue our fight against forest crime.