Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
National Parks
In the late 1960s Cambodia had six national parks, together covering 22,000 sq km (around
12% of the country). The long civil war effectively destroyed this system and it wasn't re-
introduced until 1993, when a royal decree designated 23 areas as national parks, wildlife
sanctuaries, protected landscapes and multiple-use areas. Several more protected forests
were added to the list in the last decade, bringing the area of protected land in Cambodia to
over 43,000 sq km, or around 25% of the country.
This is fantastic news in principle, but in practice the authorities don't always protect
these areas in any way other than drawing a line on a map. The government has enough
trouble finding funds to pay the rangers who patrol the most popular parks, let alone to re-
cruit staff for the remote sanctuaries, though in recent years a number of international
NGOs have been helping to train and fund teams of enforcement rangers.
The Mondulkiri Protected Forest, at 4294 sq km, is now the largest protected area in
Cambodia and is contiguous with Yok Don National Park in Vietnam. The 4013-sq-km
Central Cardamoms Protected Forest borders the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary to the
west and the Phnom Aural Wildlife Sanctuary to the east, creating almost 10,000 sq km of
designated protected land. The noncontiguous Southern Cardamoms Protected Forest (1443
sq km) is along the Koh Kong Conservation Corridor, the ecotourism potential of which is
as vast as its jungles are impenetrable.
CAMBODIA'S MOST IMPORTANT NATIONAL PARKS
BEST TIME
TO VISIT
PARK SIZE FEATURES
ACTIVITIES
1581
sq km
hotel-casino, ghost town,
views, waterfalls
trekking, biking, wildlife-
watching
Bokor
Nov-May
350 sq
km
Kirirom
waterfalls, vistas, pine forests
hiking, wildlife-watching
Nov-Jun
150 sq
km
beaches, islands, mangroves,
dolphins, monkeys
boating, swimming, hiking,
wildlife-watching
Ream
Nov-May
3325
sq km
trekking, adventure, wildlife-
watching
Virachey
unexplored jungle, waterfalls
Nov-Apr
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