Cambodia's Flooded Forests are Drowning

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Cambodia's Flooded Forests are Drowning

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Upstream Dams Are Drowning Cambodia’s Protected Flooded Forest
January 13, 2023
Authors:
Marta Kasztelan
Andy Ball
Southeast Asia
[NOTE: Some great photos to accompany the article can be seen on the link below. It is worth a visit.]

Kong Chanthy’s face lights up as he reminisces about the past. Thirty years ago, the flooded forest in the middle of the Mekong River in northeast Cambodia, just south of the border with Laos, teemed with life and communities prospered.

The forest didn’t just provide sustenance for the 13,000 people who live along the river north of Stung Treng town, says Kong, who is the head of community fisheries and ecotourism in O’Svay commune. It nourished endangered birds and fish, some migrating up the Mekong from Tonle Sap Lake in the country’s northwest—the largest inland fishery in the world, supplying Cambodians with 60% of their protein. And its shrubs and trees also offered river animals refuge from predators and safe spawning grounds.

The area’s exceptional biodiversity didn’t go unnoticed. In 1999 the flooded forest was designated a Wetland of International Importance under UNESCO’s Ramsar Convention.

Covering an area of 14,600 hectares, the Ramsar site is an ecosystem that can only be found along this 40-kilometre stretch of the Mekong. The forest’s iconic landscape—strangler figs, with their tentacle-like branches wrapped around massive acacias—are adapted to the unique conditions and attract international tourists. As did a population of freshwater dolphins in a nearby deep pool, the last member of which died last year.

The trees, some as tall as 25 metres, change with the seasonal fluctuations of the river. They lose their leaves as the Mekong swells with monsoon rains and they become submerged. Then when water levels drop during the dry season, typically from October to early May, they dry out and grow new leaves.

But in the early 2000s, Kong noticed something strange. The river stopped receding during the dry season. Then the flooded forest started to die. Today, thousands of gnarled, dead trees protrude from the water. “Up to now 70-80% of the forest has died,” Kong says.

Local fisheries have already been decimated by illegal fishing and dams blocking migratory routes, Kong explains, but the damage being done to this fish habitat has made matters worse. Similarly, tourism has been reeling from the loss of the flooded forest. “We are suffering,” Kong says.

All the local people who spoke to The Third Pole echoed Kong’s observations. They talked about the devastation that has accompanied the decline of the forest, from decreasing bird and fish populations, to the damage being done to other habitats like the sandbars associated with the forest. Many said they haven’t seen certain fish species for years. And many blamed the unusual rises in water levels on the Don Sahong dam, which is just four kilometres north of the protected Ramsar site in southern Laos.
Full article and photos; https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/upst ... ded-forest

Also on this topic: Eco-Tourism Plan for Kratie's "30 Islands" on the Mekong
newsworthy/eco-tourism-plan-for-kratie- ... 50372.html
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