Conservation plan in Cambodia aims to protect habitat of endangered
bird
The Associated Press
Monday, April 14, 2008
STOUNG, Cambodia: Conservationists in Cambodia think they might be
turning the corner in their fight to save one of the world's rarest
birds.
Since 2005, a rush to turn grasslands into large rice farms has
gobbled up one-third of the Bengal florican's habitat in Cambodia,
threatening the critically endangered bird with extinction.
But a new land-protection plan - devised by the Wildlife Conservation
Society, based in New York, along with BirdLife International from
Britain and Cambodian authorities - appears to be slowing this
controversial real estate grab.
Most of the world's Bengal floricans, believed to number fewer than
1,000, live in scattered pockets on the fringes of Cambodia's Great
Lake, also known as the Tonle Sap. The rest are in India, Nepal and
Vietnam.
The Cambodian program to protect florican habitat bans development in
five zones totaling 135 square miles, or 350 square kilometers, while
villages and farms within the zones can remain, preserving traditional
ways of life. The plan calls for the police to patrol by motorbike
during the dry season and by boat during floods.
Since the program was adopted, three planned developments have been
canceled and another put on hold, according to Tom Evans, a Wildlife
Conservation Society technical adviser in Cambodia.
"Some prospective developers have been deterred at an earlier stage
when they learned that the areas had a special designation," he said.
More such zones, known as integrated farming and biodiversity areas,
are planned.
In mid-March, the height of the dry season, the grasslands near Great
Lake, in west-central Cambodia, are at their bleakest. They stretch to
the horizon, brown and flat under the blazing sun, with barely a tree
to break the monotony. Smoke curls into the air where farmers burn off
scrub to rejuvenate pasture for their cattle. Ox carts trundle down
deeply rutted tracks.
But for the patient and the sharp-eyed, this landscape offers a
striking sight: the court****p display of the male Bengal florican.
The bird, a black-and-white bustard - large, long-legged and heavy,
looking like a small ostrich - struts into a clearing, stretches its
long neck and ruffles up its feathers. It then flits into the air
before fluttering back to the ground in an undulating pattern, like a
parachutist caught in a crosswind.
As it descends, it emits a deep humming sound that has earned it its
Cambodian name, "the whispering bird." The displays are usually
carried out within sight of other males, in what amounts to an open
dance competition to attract a mate.
"They're really unique," says Lotty Packman, a 24-year-old researcher
from the University of East Anglia in England. "They're very striking
and very charismatic."
Packman was spending long days in the heat, netting floricans and
attaching tracking devices to learn more about them, especially the
elusive female, of which little is known.
The species was rediscovered in Cambodia in 1999. Before then, the
country's decades-long civil war had made detailed exploration of the
countryside too dangerous.
But peace has proved to be a far greater threat. Businessmen have
snapped up thousands of acres of land in often murky deals and built
more than 100 strip dams, which turn the grassland - the florican's
natural habitat - into rice paddies that can produce rice during the
dry season.
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