Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
ton's two-month excursion in the area around Preah Vihear, near where we were, traversed a
region filled with large mammals that were rare or extinct elsewhere. Back then, the four spe-
cies of wild cattle still flourished here, although koupreys were always rare. Wharton filmed
six separate groups of koupreys, producing the only existing footage of this species in the
wild. He estimated that there were roughly 400 to 500 living west of the Mekong River, 200
to 300 in Lomphat Wildlife Sanctuary, and 50 in the Samrong District of Kratie Province. In
1964, Wharton presented a copy of the film to Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who had a spe-
cial affection for this rare creature. As a child, Sihanouk had kept a pet kouprey in the Royal
Gardens. He subsequently named the kouprey Cambodia's national animal and established
Kulen Promtep, Lomphat, and Phnom Prich Wildlife Sanctuaries to protect the last kouprey
herds.
Wharton became the champion of efforts to save this species. After his visit with Sihanouk,
he staged another expedition to capture live koupreys for captive breeding as a hedge against
extinction in the wild. Although he captured five animals, Wharton ended up with none. Two
of them died during handling, and three bolted to freedom. Wharton once said, half joking,
that an ancient spell had been cast over the kouprey, shielding it from human efforts to learn
about it and save it. In any case, outbreaks of war between the 1960s and the 1980s precluded
further kouprey-seeking expeditions. In 1982, a herd was reported near the Thai border, but
according to a Cambodian researcher, the effort to find it was called off after a land mine
critically injured the group's guide.
New explorers have emerged in the postwar period to walk in Wharton's boots, among
them Barney Long. When Barney first visited Mondulkiri, in April 2000, he had the good
fortune of working with Lean Kha, a famous resident hunter, former poacher, and veteran of
the Cambodian army, which had ousted the Khmer Rouge from this stronghold. Now Kha
complained that wildlife was fast disappearing from the forest and suggested that someone
pay him to protect the animals rather than shoot them.
On that first survey trip, Barney spent twenty-two days crisscrossing the Mondulkiri forest
with Kha and Steven Swan, another British biologist based in Vietnam. Although wildlife
was scarce, he sensed potential for recovery. Such a vast, unbroken tract of lowland forest
was impossible to find east of the Mekong. If rare cattle and Eld's deer, and along with them
the tiger, were to recover anywhere in Cambodia, this would be the place. And recovery
seemed possible because tracks of wild cattle were abundant, and tracks of Eld's deer and
what could be wild water buffalo were evident, too. The travelers logged their first sighting
of the elusive giant ibis; sightings of several species of vultures, populations of which had
been decimated across Asia; and slide marks of the rare Siamese crocodile. On the final day
of the survey, Barney and his colleagues also saw a tiger track. These promising signs helped
to build support for an area wildlife recovery plan. Two years later, the World Wildlife Fund
started working in this Asian wilderness, hiring Kha as a lead ranger to protect the species
