Heritage site

Ream National Park

ឧទ្យានជាតិសមុទ្រព្រះសីហនុរាម

Ream National Park is a coastal national park in Preah Sihanouk province, on the southwest coast of Cambodia.[1] IntoCambodia and a 2022 sub-decree give its name as Preah Sihanouk Ream Marine National Park (ឧទ្យានជាតិសមុទ្រព្រះសីហនុរាម).[2][3] The 2003 IUCN study calls it Preah Sihanouk (Ream) National Park.[1] Its mangrove estuary, forested hills and two offshore islands support the fishing and farming of the villages around it.[1]

Geography

The heart of the park is the estuary of the Prek Toek Sap, a river that crosses the park to the sea.[1][2] Wide stands of mangroves line the estuary, with rear-mangrove forest and mudflats behind them.[1] West of the river, low hills carry lowland and dwarf evergreen forest; more isolated hills rise to the east, and freshwater marshes mix with the mangroves in the north and east of the park.[1] A 2003 IUCN study gives about 1,800 hectares (4,400 acres) of mangrove forest in the park, a figure it takes from a 2001 survey by De Lopez and others.[1]

Two uninhabited islands to the southeast belong to the park: Koh Thmei (កោះថ្មី) and Koh Ses (កោះសេះ).[1][2] IUCN's 2003 case study gives about 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) for the two islands together.[1] IntoCambodia lists 40.3 square kilometers (15.6 square miles) for Koh Thmei and 7.7 square kilometers (three square miles) for Koh Ses, which add up to about 4,800 hectares (11,900 acres).[2] Mangroves fringe most of the shore of Koh Ses, which forms the park's southeastern tip.[2] Seagrass beds, coral reefs, beaches and rocky shores line the islands and the mainland coast.[1]

Sources give very different areas for the park. The list of natural parks under the 1993 royal decree gives 150,000 hectares (370,700 acres).[4] A 2003 figure is about 21,000 hectares (51,900 acres),[1] and an undated provincial profile gives 39,634 hectares (97,900 acres), shared with Kampot province.[2] The park lies close to the towns of Kampot and Sihanoukville, along National Route 4, which the IUCN study calls the country's main highway.[1]

History

Cambodia's protected areas were nearly destroyed during the civil war. In 1993 a royal decree rebuilt the network, naming 23 protected areas of several kinds, from national parks and wildlife sanctuaries to areas for multiple use.[1] Ream was one of the natural parks on that list, under the name Ream (Kampong Som).[4] A 2003 case study by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) records Ream as the first national park in Cambodia to be inaugurated after the civil war, in 1995.[1]

From 1997 to 1999 the Ministry of Environment, with support from the United Nations Development Programme, ran a project to prepare a zoning and management plan for the park, build park facilities and train its staff.[1] Work funded by the Asian Development Bank followed in 1999 and 2000, to refine the management zones and to involve local communities in managing the coast and sea.[1] As of 2003, Ream was one of five national parks in Cambodia with a draft management plan.[1] The draft divided the park into three zones. A strictly protected core zone, covering most of the park, took in both islands and the mainland forest, wetlands and mangroves, and banned all use of natural resources. A smaller buffer zone on the coast east of the park and around the Prek Toek Sap wetlands allowed traditional community use under rules agreed with the Ministry of Environment. In a community development zone in the north, rural development and settlement were permitted, including village use of forest and fisheries resources.[1] The 2003 study records 49 village fishing groups and a village fisheries committee managed the park's inshore fishing grounds under rules they had written themselves.[1]

On November 1, 2018, Sub-decree No. 150 reclassified two areas of the park in Prey Nob district as a sustainable-use zone for development.[5] It granted 1,668 hectares (4,122 acres) to HTTH Island Investment for a tourism project.[5] Celestial Stars Limited received 409 hectares (1,011 acres) for a hotel, an international resort and entertainment centers, with a casino, lottery and sports betting.[5] On November 22, 2022, Sub-decree No. 239 turned about 304 hectares (750 acres) of the park's sustainable-use areas into community area.[3]

Communities

Citing 1996 figures, the 2003 study reports almost 30,000 people, in about 5,500 households, in the five communes that border or overlap the park, and 13 villages with land inside it.[1] In its account, settlements were widely dispersed until National Route 4 was upgraded in the 1960s, when they gathered along the roadside. They grew more concentrated during the Khmer Rouge years, when villages grouped together for safety. Residents included more recent immigrants, most of whom arrived during or after that era, and longer-term settlers.[1]

Most households lived from farming, fishing and gathering forest products, almost all of it from the park.[1] Just over a quarter of households farmed as their main source of income, working just under 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) inside the park. Fishing was the main livelihood of a quarter to a third of residents, with almost 500 boats working in and near the park. Up to 84 percent of the fishing and farming households gathered firewood there.[1] Villagers collected more than 50 kinds of wild products there and used over 200 plant species as medicine.[1] Commercial trawlers also fished the area, and the park drew some tourists.[1] The 2003 study valued what residents took from the park at about $1.2 million a year, or $220 for each household in and beside it. It put the mangroves' value at about $900,000 a year, counting the goods people gathered there and the storm protection and erosion control they gave the coast.[1]

The 2003 study gives an estimate that more than a third of the park had been heavily changed by farming, logging, mangrove cutting, clearing for aquaculture, charcoal burning and other uses, citing a 1997 IUCN source.[1] Some mangroves had been cut illegally, a prawn and crab farm of nearly 50 hectares (124 acres) operated inside the park, and a 10-hectare (25-acre) experimental cockle farm had been approved.[1]

Wildlife

A 2024 report by Fauna & Flora and the Fishing Cat Ecological Enterprise, citing Thaung and others (2018), calls a 2015 survey Cambodia's first targeted survey for the fishing cat. It recorded the species in two coastal protected areas, Ream and Peam Krasop Wildlife Sanctuary.[6] The brackish frog lives in mangroves and is known from only a few places on the Cambodian coast. People collect it in the park as fishing bait and for food, and in 2017 surveyors saw it gathered in the mangroves around Kang Keng Airport, near the park.[6]

Visiting

The park's mangroves, tropical forest and rivers draw visitors for birdwatching, boat tours and hiking.[2]

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.26 1.27 IUCN, Ream National Park, Cambodia: balancing the local opportunity costs of wetland protection, Case Studies in Wetland Valuation no. 3 (May 2003)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 IntoCambodia.org, Preah Sihanouk Province (undated)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Open Development Cambodia, Sub-decree no. 239 on the conversion of sustainable use areas of 303.7694 hectares in Preah Sihanouk Ream Marine National Park to community area (November 22, 2022)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Open Development Cambodia, National parks and wildlife sanctuaries (May 23, 2019)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Open Development Mekong, Sub-decree No. 150 on determining management zone in nature protection area as sustainable use zone in Ream National Park (November 1, 2018)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Fauna & Flora and Fishing Cat Ecological Enterprise, Mangrove Biodiversity Survey Report, Peam Krasop Wildlife Sanctuary & Koh Kapik Ramsar Site, Cambodia 2023 (2024)
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This page was last edited on 19 October 2026, at 00:12.