In July 2026, Cambodia's Ministry of Environment officially designated a 315-hectare wetland area in Pursat Province as a genetic conservation zone — the first site of its kind in the country created specifically to protect an animal species. The move is aimed at preserving one of the last significant wild populations of the Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis), which numbers at least forty individuals here.
The species remains in the "critically endangered" category on the IUCN Red List: the global wild population is estimated at fewer than a thousand individuals, with a significant portion concentrated precisely in the Cardamom Mountains. The new designation of the zone provides a stricter legal regime than ordinary protected areas and is intended to prevent illegal land grabbing and poaching.
The success was largely made possible by the involvement of the indigenous Chorng communities. Local rangers have patrolled the rivers for many years, monitored nests and reported threats. In 2024, thanks to their monitoring, five nests with 106 eggs were recorded; about sixty hatchlings emerged from them — the largest recorded breeding of the species in the wild this century.
Alongside habitat protection, there is a breeding and release programme. Since 2011, the organisation Fauna & Flora International has released 246 purebred Siamese crocodiles into the wild, one hundred of them starting in 2024. These efforts complement natural reproduction and help maintain the genetic diversity of the population.
Protecting the crocodiles simultaneously helps conserve entire wetland ecosystems of the Cardamom Mountains — one of the last large tracts of tropical forest in Southeast Asia. Local communities receive not only environmental but also practical benefits from the sustainable management of the territory.
The new status of the zone shows how a combination of strict legal measures, scientific monitoring and the traditional knowledge of indigenous people can give a rare species a real chance of recovery.
