World Wildlife Fund

Day Eleven: Forest Dwellers
Today, we travel by elephant. In the wet season, the forests are very dense, trails are hard to find and the undergrowth is too thick to walk through. I get to ride a young frisky female. Her mahout - the elephant driver and keeper - allows her to play in the water, and as we splash through little streams, she constantly uses her trunk to reach back towards him.

The Phnong, a local indigenous group, live in small scattered forest villages that are often temporary. They rely heavily on slash-and-burn farming for dry rice cultivation and other plants and supplement this with hunting, fishing and gathering wild foods. We meet with one of these groups that have settled in the area. The community is governed by a council of local elders and has a village headman. The headman wants to highlight the problem his people are facing; outside encroachers have been cutting down trees and are now mining in the area that they have traditionally been entitled to. Martin later confirms that at least 4 new mining concessions were recently granted in this area. This has so many potential adverse effects; from conflict with local communities to destruction of fish spawning habitat, and poisonous effluents that contain mercury and cyanide reaching people and fish species downstream.

One of the most important strategies that WWF utilizes is the formal establishing of land tenure or land user rights for local communities. Not only will this give them more incentive to sustainably manage natural resources but it also protects them from various encroaching groups. This is a long term strategy. It will take time and lots of resources to expand to the rest of the landscape. While we work with the Phnong and other communities to set up these rights, WWF also aims to help local communities attain better standards of living. The ecotourism component of the Srepok Wilderness Area project must have a clear link between conservation, sustainable resource management, and community well being.

On our way back through the forests, we see a total of seven black shanked doucs, made up of two groups (one a young mother with a baby). Doucs are possibly the most beautiful primate in the world. Unlike the red-shanked doucs, the black-shanked doucs are black and grey, with a bluish white face and yellow around their eyes. They are arboreal, living in trees and spend at least half the day foraging for food. They are very social and live in groups with twice as many females than males in most groups. It is not uncommon to see them travel in single file through the forest, led by the dominant male. The hushed forest seems to hold its breath as they show themselves. This is one of the most magical moments I've had on my trip.


Hear what the Phnong people feel is needed to manage the forests they live in