Cambodia
Cambodia is not ready for tigers. Its government wants to reintroduce them into the Cardamom landscape, with India pressured to supply cats. But prey is missing, protection is weak, and corruption runs deep. This is not rewilding—it is gambling with survival.
Surveys confirm the problem: sambar and gaur, the large-bodied prey tigers need, are almost absent. Instead, porcupine, mouse deer, and a few wild boar dominate camera traps. That diet cannot sustain a breeding population. Forests remain deadly too. Thousands of snares are pulled each year, only for thousands more to return.
Cambodia lost its last tiger in 2007. Since then, 1.48 million hectares of primary forest have disappeared. Hydropower projects, logging, and organized crime still hollow out the Cardamoms. Sending tigers into this system now would repeat history—loss disguised as conservation.
Until prey recovers and enforcement becomes real, the political failure driving Cambodia’s biodiversity collapse will turn reintroduction into spectacle. Tigers need forests, not diplomatic experiments.
The Cambodia article:
Based on The Print, India.
Photo via The Print.
