Wildlife Alliance

Opening Ceremony for Chi Phat Reforestation Area

On Friday, June 27, 2008, Wildlife Alliance hosted the opening ceremony of the Chi Phat Reforestation Area in Chi Phat Commune, Koh Kong Province, Cambodia. The ceremony was attended by local villagers, Commune and District Authorities (including the District Governor), and Forestry Administration officers as well as foreign dignitaries including representatives of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Buddhist monks blessing the new Chi Phat Reforestation area

During the ceremony, the new signage marking the Reforestation Area was unveiled as Buddhist monks blessed the forest and distinguished guests planted trees and made welcoming remarks. Wildlife Alliance has worked with local authorities to designate over 30 square kilometers (3,000 ha) of land to be reforested and rehabilitated to its natural state.

Wildlife Alliance has been working in Cambodia since March 2000 and in the Cardamom Mountain Range since April 2002, assisting the Royal Government of Cambodia to manage the tropical forest and help poor communities develop alternative livelihoods in harmony with the neighboring forests.

Wildlife Alliance achieves its goals by designing sustainable development programs that implement a comprehensive approach: providing poor farmers with access to land, capital and markets; reducing destructive cultivation practices and forest product trafficking; facilitating participatory land use zoning and demarcation; and assisting the government at all levels to implement good governance procedures regarding the protection of forests and wildlife.

In 2003, Wildlife Alliance's Threat and Needs Assessment of the Southern Cardamoms determined that illegal activities caused by by endemic poverty were destroying the tropical forest and endangered wildlife of the Cardamom Mountain range, especially the Southern Cardamoms, after the recent construction of National Road No. 48.

Approximately 10,000 people living in the Coastal Cardamoms depend either directly or indirectly on the biodiversity of the area for food security and other needs, and the area continues to be threatened by illegal hunting and poaching of wildlife. 

Planting trees

Wildlife Alliance identified three communities where hunting and logging were at their worst: Chi Phat, Araing Valley, and Talam. Due to poverty and a lack of plowing equipment, villagers conducted unsustainable slash-and-burn agriculture, destroying vast tracts of forest, and illegally hunted wildlife. In Chi Phat alone, farmers had burned over 50 square kilometers (50,000 ha) of tropical forest in the middle of one of the last seven elephant corridors and the largest tiger range in Southeast Asia.

With funding from USAID and the Asian Development Bank, Wildlife Alliance began reforestation at Chi Phat to assist the community in September 2007 with the construction of a tree nursery on the outskirts of Chi Phat commune.

Since then Wildlife Alliance has worked with local community members to collect seeds of 55 native species and build a stockpile of approximately 677,295 seeds. Working together, we have germinated 65,000 seedlings of 18 different native species and planted 22,498 trees. Another 27,502 are scheduled to be planted in 2008.

A tree awaits planting

In total, Wildlife Alliance and the community of Chi Phat plan to plant 5 million trees over a 5-year period to support the community's economic development, provide vital habitat for endangered species, and protect watersheds and other vital ecological resources.

To date the reforestation project, which employs 12 women and 12 men from 21 families in Chi Phat Commune, has purchased 900 rice bags of cocount husks directly from Chi Phat Commune for the production of coco peat, which will help enrich nursery soil and contribute to the local economy. 

To support sustainable development activities like the one in Chi Phat Commune, visit our Donate page and select "Cambodia" from the drop-down menu. Your donation will go toward reforestation efforts in Chi Phat and other areas of the Southern Cardamom Mountains, rangers working to protect the Southwest Elephant Corridor (SWEC), environmental education, and sustainable development through ecotourism development. Just click here!