Cambodia & Nature: 2001, the last time a Khmer trembled before a tiger
- Editorial team
- Jun 11
- 7 min read
Ten years after the official extinction of the Indochinese tiger in the Kingdom, Bengal tigers from India are preparing to set foot in the forests of the Cardamom Mountains. An ambitious gamble, praised by some and feared by others—caught between ecological hope and troubling uncertainties.
Sat Born remembers it as if it were yesterday. That morning in 2001, as he was walking up a forest trail through the wooded slopes of the Cardamoms to collect rattan, he suddenly froze. In front of him, just a few meters away, a large tawny, striped mass blocked the path.
“Its head was this big,” he says today, spreading his hands, his eyes still wide with astonishment. “I was paralyzed. I didn’t know if the tiger was coming toward me.”
A banana and durian farmer in the village of Trapeang Chheu Trav in southwestern Cambodia, Sat Born was one of the last people to meet, alive, the gaze of this striped phantom. Six years later, in 2007, a camera trap triggered for the last time. The last confirmed tiger in Cambodia had passed before the lens—and disappeared.
In 2016, the tiger (Panthera tigris) was officially declared extinct on Cambodian soil. A painful reality for a country that, in the 1990s, still hosted several hundred Indochinese tigers in the wild.
Decades of intensive poaching, trafficking of animal parts to Asian black markets, and weak law enforcement—this was the story of a foretold extinction. Today, history may be turning. Bengal tigers from India are set to be relocated to the protected forests of the Cardamom Mountains. A project rich in symbolism and goodwill—but also filled with unanswered questions and concerns that deserve attention.
From diplomatic agreement to reintroduction enclosure
The project is not new. As early as 2016, the Cambodian government adopted a National Tiger Action Plan, welcomed by WWF as a major milestone. In 2022, a bilateral agreement between India and Cambodia formalized New Delhi’s intention to donate a founding population of Bengal tigers to Phnom Penh. The move was presented as a gesture of global conservation cooperation, with India having more than doubled its tiger population since launching “Project Tiger” in 1973—from about 1,800 individuals to 3,682 according to the 2022 census.
On the ground, a 16-square-kilometer reintroduction center has been built in Kravanh National Park—926,000 hectares of dense forest in the heart of the Cardamoms—equipped with tracking technologies and acclimatization enclosures.
However, many details of the project remain unclear. How many tigers will be transferred? Jimmy Borah, deputy director of the Indian NGO Aaranyak and consultant to Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment, mentions “four to six individuals, probably four females and one or two males.” K. Ramesh of the Wildlife Institute of India, the scientist overseeing the project on the Indian side, speaks of eleven animals. Two figures, two visions, one project—the administrative ambiguity surrounding the operation is not reassuring.
An “exotic” tiger in a Khmer forest?
The first objection is taxonomic. The tigers that historically inhabited Cambodian forests belonged to the Indochinese subspecies (Panthera tigris corbetti), with remnant populations still found in Thailand and Myanmar. The animals India plans to send are Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris)—a subspecies adapted to very different ecosystems, from the dry forests of Rajasthan to the mangroves of the Sundarbans.
This issue has sparked intense scientific debate. A 2015 study in Science Advances concluded that all mainland Asian tigers belong to a single subspecies, P. t. tigris—effectively invalidating the distinction between Bengal and Indochinese tigers.
Conversely, research published in 2018 in Current Biology maintains the existence of six distinct subspecies. For Sugoto Roy, co-chair of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group, the matter is settled: the Indochinese tiger is no longer recognized as a separate subspecies, and any mainland tiger is biologically suitable for reintroduction in Cambodia. “It is the same subspecies,” he states.
Supporters of the project rely on this argument to move forward. Critics, however, point out that even with close genetic ties, thousands of years of adaptation to different environments have shaped distinct behaviors, dietary preferences, and physical capacities in each population.
Insufficient prey: the project’s Achilles’ heel
For K. Ullas Karanth, a leading carnivore biologist and global authority on tiger research, the key issue is not genetic but ecological: is there enough prey in the Cardamoms to sustain a viable population of large cats? His answer is troubling.
An adult tiger kills about one medium-sized animal—such as a deer or bovine—per week. A breeding female consumes even more. To maintain a stable prey population, Karanth compares the system to compound interest: the prey base must be roughly ten times greater than the annual offtake.
In practical terms, to support a single tiger killing fifty prey animals per year, around five hundred large herbivores must be available within its territory. “Releasing tigers into ‘empty’ forests simply does not work,” he concludes.
A 2020 study published in Conservation Science and Practice—co-authored by Wildlife Alliance, the very NGO leading the project, and the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research—estimated that “the risk of insufficient prey is too high for decision-makers to approve reintroduction.” Researchers calculated less than a 25% probability that the area could support 25 adult tigers. For a population of five individuals, the probability rises to 80%—but such a small population is highly vulnerable to inbreeding and genetic collapse.
Thomas Gray of WWF’s Global Tiger Programme, a co-author of the study, offers a more optimistic view: wild pigs, abundant in the Cardamoms, could make up the bulk of the reintroduced tigers’ diet.
Examples from South Asia and the Russian Far East show that tigers can survive on prey bases dominated by suids. “The success of reintroduction will largely depend on wild pig density and the tigers’ ability to adapt,” he says. Karanth remains unconvinced: without rigorous studies confirming sufficient densities in Cambodia, this reasoning remains speculative.
The memory of poaching: a persistent threat
Perhaps the most daunting question is this: how can we ensure that reintroduced tigers will not meet the same fate as their predecessors?
Following the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, Cambodia’s instability made it a hub for illegal wildlife trade. Tiger parts fed Asian black markets—especially in China—for traditional medicine and luxury goods. Armed poachers used snares, pitfall traps, and even landmines to kill big cats. “There was no law enforcement,” recalls Sat Born.
In 2005, a Cambodian court sentenced Yor Ngun, a notorious poacher, to seven years in prison after he admitted to killing more than 600 animals since the 1970s, including 19 tigers.
Poaching has not disappeared. In 2023, the Indochinese leopard (Panthera pardus delacouri) was declared functionally extinct in Cambodia—an alarming sign of the continued inability to protect large carnivores.
“It is ironic that we are sending one of India’s best-protected animals—our flagship species—to a country ranked among the worst for wildlife protection, poaching, and trafficking,” says Nirmal Ghosh, trustee of the Corbett Foundation, an Indian conservation NGO.
“If it fails, if some tigers die, there will be a huge backlash in India.”
Rural communities: the missing voice
A few kilometers from the reintroduction center, another reality emerges in the villages bordering the Cardamom forests. Residents interviewed by Mongabay say they have received no information about the imminent arrival of tigers in forests they depend on for their livelihoods—collecting medicinal plants, subsistence hunting, and livestock grazing near the jungle.
This lack of consultation raises fundamental ethical and practical concerns. A hungry tiger does not stop at the boundaries of protected areas. In countries where human–tiger coexistence is a daily reality—India, Nepal, Bangladesh—livestock conflicts are well documented, costly, and sometimes deadly.
The Cambodian government has outlined initial measures: financial compensation for livestock losses and strengthened patrols. However, no detailed framework, timeline, or structured community consultation has yet been made public.
Phan Channa, deputy director of the government agency overseeing protected areas, states that the immediate priority is to rebuild prey populations and strengthen law enforcement before any translocation—through zero-snare operations, intensified patrols, and potential herbivore restoration programs. However, he has not clarified how these efforts align with a timeline that, until recently, projected tiger transfers as early as late 2025.
Dams, deforestation: a pressured habitat
The Cardamoms are one of Southeast Asia’s most intact forest landscapes. Yet this integrity is increasingly under threat. Five new hydropower dams are under construction in or near the proposed reintroduction area, along with access roads, construction activity, and resulting habitat fragmentation. Deforestation driven by commercial agriculture and illegal logging continues to erode the forest margins.
For a species in which each individual requires a home range of several hundred square kilometers, habitat connectivity is critical. Forests fragmented by roads and reservoirs hinder movement, encounters between individuals, and genetic diversity. A population isolated from the wider living world is ultimately a doomed population, regardless of how well it is initially established.
And yet, hope remains
Should the project be abandoned? Not necessarily. Conservationists point out that successful reintroductions do exist, often beginning under imperfect conditions. The return of wolves in Western Europe, bald eagles in the United States, and European bison in Poland all demonstrate that strong political will combined with sound science can reverse local extinctions.
The economic argument is also significant. A 2025 study by Cambodia’s Ministry of Tourism estimated that tiger-related tourism in the Cardamoms could generate between 5 and 7 million USD annually within a decade, create thousands of local jobs, and contribute up to 2% of national tourism GDP. India’s reserves, such as Kanha and Bandhavgarh, illustrate this potential, attracting tens of thousands of visitors each year.
Some government officials express optimism. Monitoring teams have already been deployed. A movement-tracking system is in place. The very fact that Cambodia has invested in such a sophisticated reintroduction center reflects at least a belief that the project can succeed.
The condition for success: do not rush
The most critical experts are not necessarily opposed to seeing tigers return to Cambodia. They argue that the necessary conditions must be in place before action is taken—not after. Rebuild prey populations through robust wildlife management. Eradicate snares in a verifiable and lasting way. Consult and fairly compensate local communities. Address dam construction and habitat fragmentation. Clarify scientific uncertainties regarding subspecies and behavioral adaptation.
“The return of the tiger is a legitimate and beautiful aspiration,” summarizes one consulted scientist, “but a tiger released too early into an empty, poached forest is a doomed tiger. And a tiger that dies in Cambodia is also a nail in the coffin of global reintroduction efforts.”
The message is clear: ambition must not override rigor.
As for Sat Born, he says he would like to see a tiger again before he dies. Not in a cage. In the undergrowth, at dawn, as on that morning in 2001 when the world appeared to him, for a brief moment, infinitely wild. That wish, at least, no one can fault.
KEY FACTS
2001: last documented human sighting of a tiger in Cambodia (Cardamoms).
2007: last camera trap detection.
2016: official extinction of the tiger in Cambodia and adoption of the National Tiger Action Plan.
2022: India–Cambodia bilateral agreement to transfer a founding group of Bengal tigers.
2023: Indochinese leopard declared functionally extinct in Cambodia.
2025–2026: construction of the 16 km² reintroduction center in Kravanh National Park; planned transfer of 4 to 11 individuals.
Sources Mongabay (Arathi Menon & Andy Ball, juin 2026), Conservation Science and Practice (2020), Wildlife Institute of India, Aaranyak, WWF Global Tiger Programme, UICN Red List, Science Advances (2015), Current Biology (2018), Institut du Tourisme du Cambodge (2025).
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