Peam Krasop Wildlife Sanctuary

Peam Krasop Wildlife Sanctuary (ដែនជម្រកសត្វព្រៃពាមក្រសោប) is a protected area of mangrove and evergreen forest on the coast of Koh Kong province, Cambodia. It became a protected area in 1993. With the neighboring Koh Kapik (កោះការពិ) wetland, it holds the largest area of mangrove forest in Cambodia.

A river through the mangrove forest of Peam Krasop Wildlife Sanctuary, 2011. Photo: Dtfman, CC BY-SA 3.0

Heritage site details
Khmer name	ដែនជម្រកសត្វព្រៃពាមក្រសោប
Site type	Wildlife sanctuary
Location	Koh Kong province
Country	Cambodia
Period	1993
Subjects	Land, Place & Environment

Geography

The sanctuary lies on the southwestern coastal strip of Koh Kong, in the southwest of Cambodia. Mangrove forest covers its western part and evergreen forest its eastern part, and many channels and creeks run through it. The waterways sustain fish and other aquatic life, and villagers travel along them to fish and to reach markets. The land also holds mountainous areas, streams and waterfalls, beaches, swamps, islands and coral reefs.

As of 2009, 13 settlements lay inside the sanctuary, in parts of six communes. These were Peam Krasop, Bak Khlong and Toul Kaki in Mondol Seima (មណ្ឌលសីមា) district; Koh Kapik and Tatai in Koh Kong district; and Stung Veng in the town of Khemarak Phoumin (ខេមរភូមិន្ទ). People living in and around the sanctuary take fish, crab, shrimp, squid and shellfish from it, along with firewood, building materials and traditional medicine.

The figures for its area differ by date. The 1993 decree gave it 23,750 hectares (about 58,690 acres). A 2003 map of the sanctuary, approved by the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction and the Koh Kong provincial authorities, gave 25,897 hectares (about 63,990 acres). Sub-decree No. 164, signed on July 17, 2023, set its area at 16,982 hectares (about 41,960 acres).

History

A royal decree signed on November 1, 1993, set up 23 natural protected areas in Cambodia, in four classes: national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, protected landscapes and multiple-use areas. Peam Krasop was named in it as a wildlife sanctuary.

From the late 1980s, mangrove trees in the area were cut to make charcoal and to sell as firewood, and land was cleared for shrimp ponds, homes and farms. Charcoal kilns multiplied as a market for charcoal opened in Thailand. Newcomers from other provinces settled in the area for its fish and forests and brought more efficient fishing gear. Fishers in the sanctuary used push nets, trawls, dynamite and a coastal net known locally as phong phang. The 2009 report of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called all of these methods very damaging to habitats and fish stocks.

In 2003, officials of Koh Sralao, a village on an island inside the sanctuary, said that its mangrove cover had grown through the work of the Ministry of Environment and organizations such as Danida and CARE. A representative of the conservation group WildAid said at the same time that conditions in most of the sanctuary were not improving, and that charcoal kilns abounded wherever rigorous patrolling and law enforcement were lacking.

Koh Kapik and the islets around it became a Ramsar site in 1999, a wetland listed as internationally important under the Ramsar Convention, a treaty on the protection of wetlands. The site covers 12,000 hectares (about 29,650 acres).

Management

In 2009 the sanctuary came under the Ministry of Environment's General Department of Administration for Nature Conservation and Protection and employed 21 local rangers, each paid about $20 a month.

The IUCN team wrote in 2009 that, 16 years after the sanctuary was declared, effective management had not yet been set up. A coastal management plan covering the sanctuary, prepared by a coastal zone project funded by Danida, was never carried out. The authors gave as reasons the low awareness of the plan among villagers and officials and the limited means of the sanctuary's staff. Working with villagers and local officials, the team proposed four kinds of management zone. One core zone of 1,270 hectares (about 3,140 acres) lay between the villages of Peam Krasop Pi and Koh Sralao. The rest was divided into two conservation zones totaling 6,168 hectares (about 15,240 acres), eight community zones totaling 4,221 hectares (about 10,430 acres) and a sustainable use zone of 14,238 hectares (about 35,180 acres).

Wildlife

Mangroves cover most of the sanctuary. A 2000 study cited by the IUCN team counted at least 64 mangrove species, with Rhizophora trees the most common, and the Fauna & Flora survey report for 2023 recorded 62 species of true mangroves and associated plants, shrubs and vines among them. The sanctuary matters to migratory birds, and its waterways shelter dolphins and otters.

In 2023 Fauna & Flora and the Fishing Cat Ecological Enterprise surveyed the wildlife of the sanctuary and the Koh Kapik site with the Ministry of Environment. The teams set 57 camera traps across the area in the dry and wet seasons. Threatened mammals recorded included the fishing cat, smooth-coated otter, hairy-nosed otter, large-spotted civet and long-tailed macaque, and the critically endangered Sunda pangolin. Live trapping and sound recording in February 2023, together with local reports of flying foxes, put the number of bat species in the sanctuary at 16 at least, and possibly as many as 19. Young fish of 74 species were found in the survey area, many of them species that local fishers depend on for income.

References