What will happen to the future of fishing villages and "Kampong Phluk Natural and Cultural Tourism Park" if the flooded forests vanish?

The aerial photo of fishing village in Kork kdol Village, Kampong Phluk Commune, Bakong District, Siem Reap Province. Photo: Chhut Chheana.
Chhut Chheana /USAID Wonders of the Mekong 13/09/2020 6:03 PM

These aerial images show a fishing village and former flooded forest in the Tonle Sap Lake, where many hectares of the area located in Kork Kdol Village, Kampong Phluk Commune, Bakong District, Siem Reap Province, have been turned into agricultural land.

This area is commonly known as “Kampong Phluk Natural and Cultural Tourism Park.” The stilt houses standing high above land have been built to adapt to the annual flood in the rainy season, which plays an important role in daily livelihoods and the flooded forest of the Tonle Sap Lake. This community is a big draw for local and international tourists that visit this area.

Traditionally, all of the villagers in this community depended almost entirely on fishing in the Tonle Sap Lake as their primary source of income. However, from one year to another, the catch of fish in the Tonle Sap Lake keeps plummeting. The changes in water level from the Mekong River, the loss of spawning grounds, and the use of illegal fishing gears can be the major causes to this decline.

The majority of villagers lost their daily income generated from fishing, and thus they turned to providing tourist boat services to bring holidaymakers to visit the flooded forest in Tonle Sap. Year after year, many hectares of flooded forest have been cut down and burned by villagers in the dry season and turned into agricultural land.

What will happen to this fishing village and “Kampong Phluk Natural and Cultural Tourism Park" if the flooded forests vanish? Please share these pictures and article to raise awareness of the importance of flooded forests.
https://cambodianess.com/article/what-w ... sts-vanish

Cambodia’s biggest lake is running dry, taking forests and fish with it
Drought and dams have pushed Tonle Sap into dangerous decline, threatening its swamp forests and the fish nurseries there that provide most of the nation's protein.
Many residents that live on the lake are experiencing drought and diminishing water levels, and are abandoning fishing for farming in the increasingly dry swamp forest around the lake.
7 Minute Read
By Stefan Lovgren
PUBLISHED August 17, 2020

Hun Sotharith recalls when he moved to Cambodia’s Tonle Sap to become a fisherman. It was the early 1990s, and the lake's freshwater swamp forest where he fished was so dense that it could take Sotharith, a former soldier, a day and a half to find the way back to his floating village.

Back then, during the six-month rainy season, the vast wetland became a place to feed, breed, and hide for a wide diversity of fish, including the critically endangered Mekong giant catfish. “Everywhere was forest, and fish was abundant,” says Sotharith.

Today, only remnants of that forested water world remain in Koh Chivang, the five-village district on the northwestern end of the lake where Sotharith is now deputy chief. A fire in the 2016 dry season burned 80 percent of the district’s flooded forest, destroying critical fish habitat and causing many of the 13,000 residents, who live in floating houses, to abandon fishing; they now grow chili and other crops.


Full article: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scie ... rest-fish/