Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
On a boat tour, you'll have a chance to visit
fishing hamlets
whose residents use spindly
traps to catch fish, which they keep alive until market time in partly submerged nets at-
tached to floating wooden frames. Further out, on some of the more remote mangrove is-
lands, you'll pass isolated little beaches where you can land and lounge alongside fearless
hermit crabs.
Much of Peam Krasaop Mangrove Sanctuary is on the prestigious
Ramsar List of Wet-
lands of International Importance
(
www.ramsar.org
)
. The area's habitats and fisheries are
threatened by the large-scale dredging of sand for Singapore.
TOP OF CHAPTER
Koh Kong Conservation Corridor
Stretching along both sides of NH48 from Koh Kong to the Gulf of Kompong Som (the
bay northwest of Sihanoukville), the Koh Kong Conservation Corridor encompasses many
of Cambodia's most outstanding natural sites, including the southern reaches of the fabled
Cardamom Mountains, an area of breathtaking beauty and astonishing biodiversity.
The Cardamoms cover 20,000 sq km of southwestern Cambodia. Their remote peaks -
up to 1800m high - and 18 major waterways are home to at least 59 globally threatened
animal species, including tigers, Asian elephants, bears, Siamese crocodiles, pangolins
and eight species of tortoise and turtle.
The second-largest virgin rainforest on mainland southeast Asia, the Cardamoms are
one of only two sites in the region where unbroken forests still connect mountain summits
with the sea (the other is in Myanmar). Some highland areas receive up to 5m of rain a
year. Conservationists hope the Cardamoms will someday be declared a Unesco World
Heritage Forest.
While forests and coastlines elsewhere in Southeast Asia were being ravaged by deve-
lopers and well-connected logging companies, the Cardamom Mountains and the adjacent
mangrove forests were protected from the worst ecological outrages by their sheer re-
moteness and, at least in part, by Cambodia's long civil war. As a result, much of the area
is still in pretty good shape, ecologically speaking, so the potential for ecotourism is huge
- akin, some say, to that of Kenya's game reserves or Costa Rica's national parks.
The next few years will be critical in determining the future of the Cardamom Moun-
national
(FFI;
www.fauna-flora.org
)
and
Wildlife Alliance
(
www.wildlifealliance.org
)
, and teams of
