Edited by: Divya Karnad, Ashoka University, India
Reviewed by: Edson Gandiwa, Chinhoyi University of Technology, Zimbabwe; Jonah Henri Ratsimbazafy, Madagascar Primate Study and Research Group, Madagascar
This article was submitted to Conservation, a section of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
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This study provides a preliminary assessment of the use of wild meat and fish by rural communities in the Northern Cardamoms, Cambodia. We used a case-study approach in three villages, to identify key characteristics and drivers of wildlife use, with a view to informing the design of future larger-scale investigations of wild meat and fish use in the Cardamoms. Interviews with 41 households, conducted from August to October 2013, were used to investigate the main livelihood activities of each household, including hunting and fishing activity, key hunting techniques and hunted and consumed species. Group discussions with households and hunters were used to determine the relative importance of hunting and fishing as a livelihood activity and food source. We found that over 80% of interviewed households hunted, and similarly over 90% fished. Hunters employed a range of techniques, and caught at least 38 different mammal, bird and reptile species. However, our results suggest that arable farming is the backbone of livelihoods in these villages, providing the bulk of household incomes, and that most households are hunting to prevent crop-raiding, or opportunistically, rather than to supply the commercial trade. While households expressed a preference for wild meat, bought domestic meats and fish were eaten more frequently. A potentially lucrative commercial trade with high profits per animal exists but catches are unpredictable, and hunting is dangerous. However, as many species populations are already heavily depleted, even low hunting offtakes could have significant impacts on vulnerable species. Previous research suggests that commercial hunting which targets larger-bodied and high-value species for the international wildlife trade is mainly conducted by professional hunting groups, external to local communities. The importance of agricultural trade to local communities suggests that “wildlife-friendly farming” initiatives may help to both secure a fair and reliable price for village agricultural products, while promoting conservation of biodiversity in the Cardamoms mountains. However, due to the likely larger impacts of commercial hunting groups, declines in biodiversity are likely to continue without stricter enforcement of wildlife trade laws in Cambodia's towns and cities, and the reduction of demand for wildlife products in consumer countries.
The Cardamom mountains, in southwest Cambodia, represent one of the largest, most diverse, and least developed extents of lowland deciduous forest in mainland Southeast Asia (Daltry and Momberg,
However, events since the 1960's have had devastating impacts on the Cambodian people, their livelihoods and their wildlife. Initial civil conflicts (1968–1975), subsequent rule under the Khmer Rouge (KR; 1975–1979), and then conflicts between government forces and the remnant KR groups (1979–1997), claimed the lives of millions of Cambodians, and displaced millions of others, mainly into rural areas (Terry,
In the 1990's there was a boom in the timber trade, and large tracts of forest were licensed to private timber and agricultural companies, resulting in rapid deforestation. Between 2001 and 2012 Cambodia lost over 14% of its forest cover; this deforestation rate was the fifth fastest in the world during this time period (Hansen et al.,
All of these changes in the Cardamom mountains have driven an increase in the commercial wildlife trade. During the civil conflict in the 1970–90s, military training and the availability of firearms resulted in more traditional hunting methods, such as crossbows, being replaced with more efficient firearms (Drury,
Biodiversity impacts of the conflict are thought to have been significant, although no quantitative baseline data exist for comparison. However, interviews with hunters in NE Cambodia suggest that species abundance many have halved from 1950 to 2000 (Loucks et al.,
From the 1990s onwards, significant measures have been taken by the Cambodian government to conserve Cambodia's forests and wildlife. Cambodia's protected areas (PAs) were established under the 1993 Royal Decree on the Protection of Natural Areas, and recent estimates suggest that over 40% of Cambodia is covered by some sort of PA. PAs cover a large proportion of the Northern Cardamom Mountain forests; Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary (3,307 km2), the Central Cardamom Mountains Protected Forest (4,010 km2), and Mount Aural Wildlife Sanctuary (2,544 km2) (UNEP-WCMC IUCN,
Wildlife trade volumes in the Cardamoms, while still significant, are thought to have reduced from a 1990s peak, partly due to reduced wildlife populations and partly due to the removal of many of the guns from general circulation by the local authorities, beginning in 2001 (Oul and Cheam,
While forest area and wildlife populations have reduced, wildlife still thought to be important culturally and economically to both the lowland Khmer and indigenous Mon Khmer Pear living in the Cardamoms (Daltry and Momberg,
While previous studies suggest that wildlife is still part of local livelihoods in the Cardamoms, there is still limited information on the role wildlife plays a part in overall community livelihood strategies. To gain a preliminary understanding of contemporary use of wildlife by local communities in the Cardamom mountains, we used a case-study approach in three villages in the northern Cardamoms. We aimed to describe and investigate:
- The number of households engaging in hunting and fishing, key techniques used, and the most commonly hunted species.
- The main livelihood activities of households in the study villages.
- The relative importance of hunting and fishing as a source of household cash income, including information on the main traded species, prices and buyers.
- The relative importance of hunting and fishing as a source of household non-cash income.
- The relative importance of wildmeat and fish as a source of protein, and the frequency of consumption of different species.
To this end, we employed semi-structured interviews with households and hunters, as well as group PRA techniques, situating wildlife use within the wider livelihood strategies of local communities. We use our results to build preliminary hypotheses as to the drivers of wildlife use by communities in the Cardamom mountains. We then discuss how these results and hypotheses, could be used to design further in-depth studies of wildlife use, and might inform wildlife management policies in the region.
We conducted our research in three rural villages in the Northern Cardamom Mountains, in the Battambang and Pursat provinces (
The three study villages are located directly on the northern border of the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary, at between 180 and 400 m above sea level, at the base of the Cardamom mountains. To the north of the villages, most of the landscape is below 200 m, and habitat has been converted to farmland and rice fields. To the south, the mountains within the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary are covered by relatively intact tropical moist broadleaf forests (the Cardamom mountains Rain Forest Ecoregion; WWF,
All three villages had <100 households, were majority Khmer ethnic group (>95% of the population) and were evacuated in the 1990s during the Cambodian war. Villages 1 and 2 were ex-Khmer Rouge (KR) villages, and still have significant densities of land mines in the surrounding fields and forests. As defined by the Cambodian Government's National Policy Framework for Poverty Reduction, 40, 100, and 50% of households in Village 1, 2, and 3, respectively are in poverty, and eligible for state assistance (Ministry of Planning, Kingdom of Cambodia,
During the initial scoping trip we presented the project to commune chiefs, asking for their permission and support to conduct the study, and providing them with our letter of introduction from the University of Phnom Penh (UPP). On arrival at each of the potential study villages we met with the village chief and gave him our letter of introduction. We discussed the interviews and PRA activities that we wished to conduct and asked his permission to carry out research interviews in the village. All villages chiefs that we asked gave their permission. We then conducted surveys in three villages (1 per commune) on three separate field trips, over 6–7 days, in September and October 2013.
We used semi-structured household interviews to familiarize ourselves with the main livelihood activities of households in each of the study villages. Interviews took ~2 h and were conducted by two Cambodian researchers (LN and SL), with LC present. Households were selected using a systematic random sample, following Starkey (
On arrival at each household, we introduced ourselves and the aim of the project, and we asked if they would be willing to be interviewed. We emphasized that participation was completely optional, and that the identity of all villages and interviewees would stay anonymous. Everyone that we asked agreed to be interviewed. Names of interviewees or households were not recorded at any point. Details were recorded in small notebooks rather than on questionnaire sheets, to reduce the formality of the interview. We completed 14 interviews in Villages 1 and 2, and 13 interviews in Village 3, representing 19, 38, and 13% of all households in each village, respectively. In each village, the number of interviews was limited by the time available. As a token of thanks, each interviewee was given a
Interviewees were asked to describe their main livelihood activities, including:
The frequency of the activity (trips per day/week/month/year).
The amounts of the product made or harvested (per day/week/month/year).
The money made from selling the product (per day/week/month/year).
The mainly illegal timber trade is a highly contentious subject in the study area, and we quickly removed the question on the use of timber from our list of questions, after observing the reaction of interviewees. Direct observation of livelihood activities was not possible due to the continued presence of land mines in the surrounding fields and forests, and responses provide us simply with the interviewee's estimate of frequencies and amounts.
Additionally, where interviewees were happy to discuss hunting, we asked how frequently the household consumed different animal species (i.e., whether a species was consumed daily, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly). To prompt discussion, we showed the interviewee a set of 41 cards, depicting different common and rare species thought to be present in the Cardamom mountains (Daltry and Momberg,
Where interviewees seemed comfortable to talk further about hunting we continued to discuss broader questions on hunting, including methods, preferred species and which species had been hunted by the household in the previous year. To prevent any potential unease in discussing the illegal wildlife trade, we did not attempt to estimate the amount of household income made from wildlife sales, and only asked follow-up questions on wildlife trade when information on the trade had been given unprompted and interviewees seemed comfortable with the discussion. We were not able to identify fish using binomial nomenclature, as we did not have a fisheries expert as part of the team, but wrote down the name of fished species in Khmer. Our analyses therefore do not attempt to break down results for fish by species.
We conducted a group interview with 3–4 hunters at the end of each village visit (to allow time for trust to develop). Hunters were identified through household interviews (i.e., where a member of the household that we interviewed engaged in hunting regularly), through discussions with village elders, and also through general conversations during the day between LN and village men. The opportunistic sampling strategy may mean that hunter interviews were not representative of village hunters as a whole, and our results should be taken as preliminary, with the aim of helping to develop more in-depth studies in the future.
Interviews were kept anonymous and informal in tone, conducted while sharing a meal or drink. We showed the interviewee the set of 41 species cards (predominantly mammals), and asked about the hunting techniques, frequency of capture, use and village prices for each species. In addition, we asked about more generally about the drivers of hunting in the village, the characteristics of local hunters, the level of hunting enforcement and changes in the availability of wildlife in the area.
We used the IUCN's Poverty Forestry Livelihood Analysis Toolkit (PFLA) Tool 6 (PROFOR,
Following the completion of 14 household interviews, toward the end of our visit in each village, we invited the household to send an adult representative of the household to attend one of two half-day PRA sessions (seven interviewees in each group), one of which was conducted in the morning and the other in the afternoon of the same day. Together with participants, we wrote a list of the different livelihood activities in the village, in Khmer, onto A0 paper. We then asked each participant to distribute 50 “counters” (we used 50 pieces of corn) between the different livelihood activities so that the number of counters given to each activity illustrated the amount of income from that livelihood activity. This was done twice—once for cash-income sources (illustrating the value of the items produced/procured which were then sold) and one for non-cash income sources (the value of produced/procured items which were then used by the household, not sold). As described in the PFLA (PROFOR,
During the exercise, we discussed each livelihood activity with the group. We only discussed wildlife and timber sales if the participants brought it up unprompted, because both activities are illegal. At the end of each meeting we provided participants with lunch or an evening meal and gave them each a krama to thank them for their participation.
In Villages 1 and 2, the consumption of insects did not come up in household interviews, and insects were therefore not included in any of the PRA exercises. In Village 3, grasshoppers and beetles were reported and observed to be consumed, and in we therefore added insects as a category for the PRA exercise.
We used a similar method to the PFLA toolkit to look at the importance of different fish and animal protein sources in the household diet. We asked participants from each household to distribute 50 pieces of corn to illustrate the importance of beef, pork, chicken, market-bought fish (from outside the village), caught fish (including crabs, shrimp and small fry), and wild meat, for feeding their household, over the course of a year. For Village 3, an additional category of “insects” was added after household interviews highlighted that insects were an important part of the diet.
We have used the results of these interviews and PRA exercises to build a first look at the livelihood activities of, and the use of wildlife by, local communities in the Cardamom mountains. Specifically we analyse and present:
- the number and percentage of surveyed households that reported engaging in hunting or fishing, as well as the number using different hunting and fishing techniques.
- the number of surveyed households reporting hunting individual species in their household interviews.
- The average number of counters (and associated standard errors) allocated in the PRA exercises to each product, representing their relative importance as sources of cash and non-cash incomes, by village and in total.
- The frequency of consumption of different species as reported by interviewed households.
- The average number of counters (and associated standard errors) allocated in the PRA exercises to each type of meat (including wild meat) representing their relative importance to the household diet, by village and in total.
In some specific cases, we have used Pearson's product moment correlations to further explore correlations between livelihood activities.
Qualitative information on household livelihood activities collected during household and hunter interviews is presented with these quantitative results, providing contextual details on individual activities, and potential explanations and hypotheses for the quantitative results.
Data were analyzed using Microsoft Excel and R computing language (R Core Team,
Most households (83%) reported having hunted during the previous year. At least 38 species were reported to have been caught in the village territories (
The number of households and hunter groups [
The main hunting methods were snares, slingshots, dogs and homemade “pump guns” (
Over half (56%) of households used slingshots for short hunting trips in the evening or night, when coming home from the fields, or after setting fishing rods in the river. Although the animals procured with slingshots tend to be small and of low value [birds, Slow loris (
Twenty nine percentage of households used homemade “pump guns.” Interviewees explained that between 10 and 20 years ago, shotguns were readily available, a legacy from the civil war in the 1990's. Shotguns have now mainly been confiscated or hidden, but homemade guns are cheap and easy to make, and are used frequently for night hunting. Pump guns operate using loose shot rather than cartridges or bullets and use a pump-action fashioned from a bicycle pump. Manufacture is cheap and parts easy to come by. Although pump guns are effective at killing medium-sized animals (such as muntjac), hunters reported than they were not capable of killing larger mammals, such as gaur, wild pig, sambar (
In addition to these main hunting techniques, animals are also harvested when field are cleared and burned (generally monitor lizards, turtles and snakes), poison is used to catch small birds and tree shrew species, and leopard cats (
Almost all households (95%) fished. Crab and shrimp and small fry were caught by women, using a scoop net. While they only provide a small amount of food, crab and shrimp can be collected on the way home from working in the fields and were added to forest and farm vegetables to create a low-cost meal, the only purchased good being rice (which is not often grown in these upland villages). In larger rivers, men caught river fish and eels with a fishing line, rod or net. These fish are still quite small (5–15 cm in length), and men reported catching between 0.5 and 1 kg per trip, or enough for 1 or 2 meals. Several men reported that rod or line fishing and hunting activity tended to coincide; men would set their lines in the evening, and then go night hunting (or “lamping”) with a torch and a slingshot or pump gun. On their return from hunting they would then check and retrieve their lines.
Electric shock fishing was practiced in all three villages. A car battery is used to provide a high voltage shock into the river, killing or stunning the fish (and turtles), which are then easily collected by hand. Electric shock fishing is illegal, and most respondents talked about “their neighbor” using this technique. It is therefore hard to gauge it popularity. However, as our stay in the villages progressed, and villagers became more trusting, several interviewees suggested that most households used electric shock fishing, and a few respondents suggested that over-use of electric shock fishing was one reason for the current low fishing returns.
Fishing activity varied with the season; in Village 1 which had a small river, households reported fishing more often during the wet season, when water levels were high enough for fish (rather than small fry, shrimp and crab) to be found. In Villages 2 and 3, some households reported reducing their fishing activity during the wet season months, when water levels were too high, and nets would get torn.
In the first month of the wet season (April/May) over 80% of households caught frogs 2–3 times a week in their fields and nearby ponds, by hand. Households reported catching up to 3 kg of frogs per trip. Frog catching is highly seasonal, and after the first month households reported that they did not catch frogs because the water in the fields and ponds became too high for them to easily catch them, and that further into the wet season frogs would often be full of worms and therefore inedible.
During the PRA exercise to identify the relative importance of different household activities for household cash incomes, households allocated 62% (SE ± 2.8) of counters to arable farming on average. Salaried work or commerce was allocated 15% (SE + 1.9), forest products 12% (SE ± 1.7) [including 1.7% (SE ± 0.5) for wild meat], livestock 9% (SE ± 1.4), and fishing (including shrimp, crabs, and turtle) 1.8% (SE ± 0.7) of counters (
Average cash-income scores per household given for agricultural, NTFP, and fishing products during the PRA exercise. Bars show average percentage of counters allocated to each product/activity, with associated standard error.
All three villages relied heavily on arable farming for cash incomes (mainly corn, mung bean, sesame, and some soy bean;
Village 2 had relatively low incomes from arable crops and households allocated the lowest number of counters to arable incomes in the PRA exercise [48% (±2.9) compared to 73% (SE ± 3.6) and 69% (SE ± 4.9) for Villages 1 and 3, respectively;
Every household in the three villages had a market garden (a small area behind the house), containing vegetables, such as eggplant, chili, herbs, gourd, cabbage, pumpkin, cassava, and beans, and fruit, such as oranges, mango, banana, papaya, coconut, milk fruit, lemon, and jackfruit. Households generally did not sell much produce for their market gardens, however there was a strong barter economy in the villages and households reported that they would often give fruit and vegetables to their neighbors for free and know that they would get the same in return. In Village 2, market gardening scored as highly as many agricultural products in terms of cash incomes (11% of beans allocated;
There were very few employment opportunities available in the three villages. Aside from several government jobs (village chief, deputies and one teacher, paid $7–15 a month), nine households contained members with either army pensions or disability allowances (often due to war wounds, or landmine injuries). Few households engaged in commerce (two households baked cakes, making between $1.25 and $4 a day, one household owned a truck, and had set up a corn trading business between the village and corn traders in the nearby town, earning a reported $500 a year. One household ran a village shop, and another had just set up a restaurant). Most employment came in the form of households with small farms selling their labor to households with larger farms in the planting and harvesting season. Of the 41 households interviewed, 28 sold their labor at some point during the year. One day's labor cost ~$3, and households reported making between $10 and $50 dollars from selling labor over the year. Although this does not represent a large income when compared to the money that can be made from arable farming, for poorer households with little land, incomes from selling labor can still be important. In the PRA exercise the land-poor Village 2, where field sizes are limited by the number of remaining land mines, incomes from selling labor scored more highly [17.2% (SE ± 3.1)] than Village 1 or 3 [5.1% (SE ± 1.1) and 6.3% (SE ± 1),
Household generally kept a few animals, with each household owning on average 10 chickens, and 1–2 cows or pigs. Livestock in the study villages is not often kept for household consumption, and instead is used in the same way as a savings account, providing source of emergency funds, or to pay for one-off purchases. 16 of the 41 households interviewed sold livestock over the last year, and household received, on average, $430 (SE ± 134) from livestock sales, not accounting for rearing costs. Cows and pigs were the main species sold, and of the 10 households that sold cows in the previous year, 5 of these did so to buy a mini tractor (“
The two main sources of income from forest products, aside from wild meat and fish, were mushrooms and medicinal plants. Three main species of medical plants were sold to traders from town, known locally as “Tacao,” “Krawine,” and “Moi Roi Kun” (or “100 uses”). Medicinal plants were collected by 30 of the 41 surveyed households and sold to town traders by 21 of these households, with profits of ~US $100/year. The main collecting season was June–September, and families might spend a few weeks collecting plants in June and July. “Pok” Mushrooms were collected by 36 of the 41 surveyed households and sold by 11 of these households. The Pok mushroom season runs for a few months (June–August) during the wet season and is sold to town traders. Pok mushrooms sell for $2.5–3/kg, and households reported making between 10 and 50 dollars each year.
In Eastern Cambodia, the most valuable NTFP is often resin, which is tapped from dipterocarp trees. Although resin trees exist in the study villages, they are of a different species and the resin produced is much less valuable (US $0.5 per kilo). It is used to caulk boats, and was only collected by five of the 41 households, generally by younger boys. Unlike in Eastern Cambodia, there are no resin collectives in the village.
In Village 3, insects were included as a category in the PRA exercise. However, no counters were allocated to insects for cash incomes.
While fishing and hunting was conducted by most households, they were only reported as primary income-generating activities by a few households. Households allocated a mean of 1.8% (SE ± 0.41) counters to fishing incomes and 1.7% (SE ± 0.54) of counters to wild meat (
Interviewees explained that the amount of fish caught in a night was often only enough for 1 or 2 meals, leaving no excess to sell. Hunter interviews suggested that only a few men in each village were “commercial hunters” engaging in as a primary livelihood activity and source of income. These men would hunt almost every day, penetrate further into the forested hills around the village, and were more likely to catch larger-bodied and higher-value species. Interviewees gave four explanations for the low number of commercial hunters in each village.
Low PRA scores for hunting may also reflect an unwillingness to talk about hunting, rather than true low sales. This was probably partially true in Village 1 (where households allocated 0.18% (SE ± 0.18) of counters to hunting incomes on average,
Hunters reported that wild meat for consumption (rather than medicinal use) was sold almost exclusively within the village, and that demand for wild meat was high because of its perceived health benefits compared with meat from the market; there is therefore no need to sell to traders. In Village 1, the trade in meat seemed to be kept hidden; hunters reported that they would sell meat at their house to the neighbors that they trusted, as there was a spy in the village (whose identity was well-known to everyone), and he might tell the authorities. In Villages 2 and 3 trade in meat was out in the open, and women would come around with meat (generally wild pig) for sale while we were conducting interviews.
Species sold to traders outside the village were generally sold for their perceived medicinal properties (
Uses and prices of wild meat species (from hunter and household interviews).
Bat sp. | Not sold | Not sold | Eases stomach pain | Not given |
Binturong | 2.5 | Not given | Meat for food, teeth, and stomach for traditional medicine | Not given |
Black bear | Not given | Not given | Gallbladder: tonic for general good health |
Gallbladder: 500–1,000 |
Civet sp. | Not given | 5–7.5 (m) | Not given | Not given |
Crocodile | 3.75–4 | Generally not hunted | Not given | |
Fishing cat | 10 (m) | Meat only | Not given | |
Gaur | Not given | Not given | Unknown | Skeleton: 200 |
Monitor lizard | 1.5 | Not given | Meat only | Not given |
Mouse deer | Not given | 2–2.5 (m) | Meat eaten to treat complications after childbirth | Not given |
Muntjac | 3.75–4.5 | Not given | “Gallbladder” |
“Gallbladder”: 35 |
Otter | Not given | Not given | Penis: erectile dysfunction | Penis: 100–200 |
Pangolin | $125–150/kg for the first 1–5 kg |
Only sold by KG | PPKG are for pangolins sold alive. |
Not given |
Porcupine | 1.25–2 | Not given | Stomach: good for pregnant women to eat. Only sold in the dry season, when porcupines eat medical plants. In the wet season they eat corn, and so have no medicinal power |
Stomach: 12.50–20 |
Sambar | 3.75–6.25 | Not given | Antler grated and added to rice wine as a health tonic |
Antler: 50 |
Serow | 6.25 | 1,000–2,000 (m, tm) | Bone: For stomach ache and healing injuries, bruises and sprains. Mix old rice water (from cooking rice) with the bone. Rub the bone with the rice water and drink the water | Bone alone: 500–800 |
Slow Loris | Not given | 5–10 (tm) | Charred loris: grated into a rice-wine tonic: Joint pain; backache; childbirth; general health tonic; mixed with tattoo paint to provide luck in war | Not given |
Snake sp. | 2–2.5 | Not given | Stomach use for traditional medicine sometimes; only bought alive by town traders | Not given |
Sun Bear | Not given | Not given | Gallbladder: tonic for general good health | Not given |
Tiger |
Not given | Not given | Tiger whisker creates a poison |
Skin and bone: 4,000–5,000 |
Turtle | 5–7.5 | Not given | Burnt gallbladder/head/whole turtle added to rice wine and honey. Used after giving birth. Women's medicine | Not given |
Wild Pig | 3–4 | Not given | Stomach: Mixed with rice wine for ladies after childbirth and children that have a fever. Fangs that are removed from tree stumps have powers and will protect you from harm is you wear them. This is not true of fangs that have been removed from a dead pig. | Not given |
Hunters universally identified the Sunda pangolin as the species that they most hope to catch, due to its high market value. Two pangolins were caught while we were in the study villages, both weighing 1.5 kg (with a value of ~$220 each), and were sold immediately to traders in Battambang, who were contacted by mobile phone. Hunters with a good pangolin dog might catch 1–2 pangolins per month (2–3 if exceptional, but in some years, as few as 1–2 per year might be caught), and well-trained dogs can sell for $1,000–2,000. In each village, only a few (1 or 2) hunters possessed trained pangolin-hunting dogs. Although animals like serow and black bear can fetch high prices (
Hunters in Village 2 reported that if they caught a high-value species, such as Sunda pangolin, serow, gaur, or bear, they would immediately hide the animal bones/skin/horns somewhere safe. They would then call/text a trader in Battambang, who would come and collect the animal. Less frequently a hunter might hold onto the wildlife items, such as bone, horn and skin) until his next trip to Battambang. In Village 1, households reported that there used to be a Battambang trader who would make frequent trips to the village to buy animals for traditional medicine trade, but the chance of being caught and fined by the rangers stopped him from making the trip, and now hunters transport the animals themselves to Battanbang. Hunters from Village 3 also reported that commercial hunting groups would come from Pursat and Battambang to hunt in the forest around the village.
Hunters were aware that the trade in wildlife was illegal and were taking precautions to keep the trade secret from the local authorities, although they also seemed happy to talk to us about the trade and their activity. Hunters only reported problems with buyer demand in the case of snakes (boa) and monkeys (pet trade); all other trades that we discussed with the hunters reported no problems with finding a buyer.
During the PRA exercise to identify the relative importance of different household activities for household non-cash incomes, households allocated 41% (SE ± 2.5) of counters to arable farming on average, of which 13% (SE ± 1.2) were for market garden products. Forest products were allocated 37% (SE ± 2.1) [including 4% (±0.6) for wild meat], fishing 16% (SE ± 1.4), and livestock 7% (SE + 0.8) of counters. While arable crops were the main source of cash-income for households, non-cash incomes were more diversely spread between different products from both farms and forest (
Average non-cash income scores per household given for agricultural, NTFP, and fishing products during the PRA exercise.
All surveyed households in the villages, as is common in Cambodia, used rice as their staple carbohydrate and a main source of calories. However, in the Cardamom mountains, the hilly terrain does not provide a good growing environment for rice. In the three study villages, only 40% of households grew their own rice, and kept it for personal consumption. No households grew enough rice to support the family for the whole year (only one household could grow enough rice to feed the family for more than 6 months). Interviewees suggested that households would use the bulk of their arable incomes to buy rice. During this study, we were unable to determine what percentage of arable incomes were used to buy rice, but we suspect that households with low arable yields may have been in “rice debt,” unable to afford the amount of rice needed to support their families. The level of “rice debt” in the cardamoms warrants further investigation. Market gardens also gained a high score for non-cash incomes, in comparison with their use as a source of cash incomes, suggesting that these gardens are an important source of food for local people.
Households ranked chicken as the only real non-cash input in terms of livestock, with pigs and cows reared for their value (and as a form of household savings) rather than household consumption.
Both fishing and hunting were allocated a larger proportion of counters as a source of non-cash incomes (i.e., for food and medicine) than as a source of cash incomes. Wild meat is seasonally available to most households, with wild pig, muntjack, and civet crop raiding during the harvest seasons. As with produce from market gardens, wild meat is bartered between households; a household fortunate enough to catch a wild pig in their fields will not be able to eat or store the whole pig for personal use, and so instead will share with his neighbors, who will then return the favor when they catch an animal. As with cash incomes, non-cash income from wild meat was not correlated with agricultural activity or land ownership.
In comparison with cash-income activities (where only
Both household interviews (where we asked about the frequency of consumption of different meat proteins in terms of whether it was eaten daily/weekly etc.) and PRA exercises (where we asked households to distribute counters to illustrate the importance of different meat proteins to the household diet) highlighted the importance of fish in the daily diet. In all three villages households allocated, on average, over 47% (SE ± 2.0) of counters to fish, and most households ate fish daily or weekly (
Average scores per household, per village, on the relative importance of different meat proteins to the household diet (
Frequency of consumption for wild and domestic species (
In comparison, wild meat was ranked second to last as a source of meat protein in the PRA exercise (
Both the PRA exercise and household interviews highlight the frequency of consumption of bought meat protein. Bought meat protein represented, on average, approximately half of the allocated counters in total in the PRA exercise. Pork, beef, and frozen fish were all bought from traders traveling from Battambang by motorbike each week, and the prices for different proteins are shown in
Prices of traded domestic meats, brought into the village by traders on motorbikes, from Battambang.
Beef | 5.00–6.25 |
Pork | 4.50–5.00 |
Chicken | 3.75 |
Frozen seafish (Market) | 2.00 |
Frozen riverfish (Market) | 3.75 |
Village 1 allocated a higher proportion of counters to bought meat and fish [57% (SE ± 5.1)] than Village 2 [48% (SE ± 3.1)] and Village 3 [39% (SE ± 5.6)]. This may be explained by market and river access. Village 1 was situated on a small stream, where large fish could not easily be found, and fishing was focused on shrimp, crab and small fry. In comparison Villages 2 and 3 were situated next to sizeable rivers, where catfish and trout could be fished. In addition, Villages 1 and 2 had road access to Battambang, whereas Village 3 was more remote, and during the wet season (when the study was conducted), access to the village, even by motorbike, can be difficult, and interviewees reported that trader visits to the village during months with heavy rain reduced from weekly visits to monthly visits.
Our exploratory surveys in three Cardamom mountain villages suggest that most households hunt, and that most mammal species in the Cardamom mountains are harvested. At the same time, they also suggest that hunting incomes represent a low proportion of household incomes, and a low proportion of the household meat consumption. Household incomes are predominantly agricultural, and both fishing and hunting only provide small additional incomes for most households. Own-caught fish, and even bought fish, pork, and chicken, are reported to be consumed much more than own-caught wildmeat.
The relative importance of fish over wildmeat in local diets has been observed in villages in Southern Cambodia, where a survey conducted in 2003 (Richardson,
It seems surprising that remote rural households would buy more meat than they hunt. However, with more context in terms of village characteristics and livelihood strategies, some plausible hypotheses for why this might be emerged. Village livelihoods in the Cardamoms have been shifting generally from subsistence use to a more trade-based system. Prior to the civil conflict, in most
In addition to this increased agricultural trade, and due to a combination of factors, it has become more cost effective, and less risky, to buy domestic meat rather than to hunt wildmeat. Where there are only a few adult men in a household, interviewees suggested that households will prioritize their available labor for agricultural work, which brings in stable household incomes, over hunting where incomes are unpredictable. Furthermore, there are still high densities of landmines in the forest surrounding these villages, and therefore the risk of hunting to life is significant. Wildlife population densities, following high levels of hunting pressure during the conflict, are also low, which reduces the potential return (CPUE) from hunting, compared with other livelihood activities which bear less risk. At the same time, improvements in road networks, and agricultural trade between the villages and nearby towns, has increased the availability of cheaper pork and sea fish.
While most households hunt, and a wide range of species are consumed over the year, the primary aim of hunting is often crop protection, with meat from hunting a welcome by-product. Some men also hunt during the pursuit of other livelihood activities, such as fishing. Only a few men in each village hunt commercially, to capture the potentially high incomes from species, such as pangolin, which are in high demand due to their perceived medicinal properties. Likewise, wildlife traders did not make scheduled trips to the study villages, maybe in part due to the low capture rate of wildlife and the remoteness of the area, and in part to hide their trade from wildlife authorities. However, interviews and past surveys (Wutty and Simms,
Even low levels of hunting can have high impacts on biodiversity where target species populations are already depleted from past levels of hunting, and therefore natural levels of replenishment are low (Milner-gulland and Mace,
All three villages studied here were highly dependent on agricultural incomes to buy staple foods—rice, fish, and domestic proteins. Households in each village collectively agree each year on which crops to grow, which are then harvested at the same time and sold to traders in town in bulk. However, the reliance on arable incomes and this strategy of bulk sales comes with risks, mainly due to the declining road network. To conduct our survey, it took us 1–2 days by motorbike from Battambang to reach each study village. For Village 2 we were unable to reach the village on the first attempt because a bridge had recently washed away. The possibility that the corn truck to take produce to market would not be able to get to Village 2 was causing great worry to the community. Due to the current state of the roads, only a few traders with good trucks can reach the villages, and this, combined with a lack of storage for crops, means that prices are set by traders and fluctuate with demand. If roads continue to decline, and traders can no longer reach these villages, households could easily lose most of their season's income. Households may then fall back on incomes from wildlife, which is easily transported by motorbike and can provide a high per kilo profit, as well replacing bought meats with wildmeat and fish. This was shown to be the case in Veal Veng in the Central Cardamoms, where during the wet season road access to villages can be completely cut off, limiting trade in agricultural products, and increasing local dependence on forest products for consumption, such as wild meat (Daltry and Momberg,
Our results suggest that despite low animal abundance, and the relatively higher availability and consumption of domestic meats, hunting continues in these Cardamom mountain village due to a combination of factors:
The need to protect crops from crop-raiding species during the harvest seasons.
The local use of wildlife for traditional medicine.
Low levels of law enforcement in most villages and towns for the commercial trade in wildlife for medicinal and decorative use.
High potential (albeit risky and unreliable) profits for the few hunters focusing on the commercial trade, which is supplying both domestic and international demand (ultimately from China).
External (non-community) hunting by commercial hunting gangs, supplying a specific trader or market (Wutty and Simms,
In addition, it may be that only small amounts of fish and domestic meat are eaten by households, and in this case even small amounts of wildmeat could have an important impact on household nutrition. We were unable to measure amounts of fish and domestic proteins consumed by households, but this should be a priority for further surveys.
In these three case study villages we suggest that there are three main types of hunters, who may respond to different management approaches:
Examples of successful “wildlife friendly farming” projects in Cambodia include the “Ibis Rice” model (Clements et al.,
Most conservation/development interventions aiming to work with local communities to support biodiversity-friendly land practices will require security of land tenure, whether this is customary or private (Robinson et al.,
Our preliminary study was based on four short field visits of 10 days each, in only three villages; these results and discussion of management scenarios should therefore be taken as first hypotheses, based on preliminary field visits. We would strongly encourage further research into village livelihoods in the Cardamom mountains and would especially prioritize studies into the nutritional importance of wild meat and fish, especially in times of economic stress. Household nutritional surveys, and more in-depth surveys of daily hunting returns where possible, would also help better gauge the number of hunted species; our species cards and questions focused on large and medium-bodied mammals and therefore the true number of species hunted (especially birds, reptiles and amphibians) is likely to be much higher.
The continued decline of wildlife populations in the Cardamoms is already flagged as a conservation priority for Cambodia but could also have significant impacts on local rural communities, especially in the context of declining road networks, where closed roads could result in large losses of income for rural farmers, and an increased reliance on own-caught wild meat and fish. In addition, it seems likely that international demand (especially from China) for medicinal wildlife products will continue to incentivize the creation and activity of specialized hunting groups in the Cardamom mountains. This external demand will likely have negative impacts on both biodiversity and in turn local food security, unless there are greater efforts at the international level to change consumer behavior and enforce national and international wildlife trade regulations.
This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of Fauna and Flora International, and following PROFOR guidelines as outlined in their Poverty-Forests Linkages Toolkit, with verbal informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave verbal informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by Fauna and Flora International. Verbal consent was taken rather than written consent. This was due to the low level of literacy in the communities that we were working with. In addition, written documents are often perceived to be very official, and asking for signatures could have caused concern and upset to community members. We therefore decided that verbal consent was more culturally appropriate in this circumstance. As detailed in the manuscript, we emphasized that participation was completely optional, and the identity of all villages and interviewees was kept anonymous. Names of interviewees or households were not recorded at any point.
All authors designed the study, conducted the fieldwork, and collaborated on drafting the manuscript. LC conducted analyses of the field data.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Many thanks to the three communities that we worked with during this study; we are so grateful for your hospitality, kindness and friendliness. Special thanks to the commune and village chiefs who gave their permission. Many thanks to the University of Phnom Penh for their support and advice. Thanks to Mathew Maltby who commissioned an oversaw the project and was a huge help with logistics.
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: