Khmer Circle: It is nothing short of a miracle that some species of wildlife are still left in the Kingdom of Wonder. Much of the forests are gone; the rare fresh water dolphins are dying; the dry season is getting drier; the annual floods are becoming more and more devastating due to lack of forest cover. Even the mountains and hills play a critical part in maintaining a balanced weather system, but these too are being chipped away to make commercial profits. About the only wild and certainly savage, resilient species that are doing noticeably well in spite of all this are those mindless hordes of vultures forming the core of the CPP under Hanoi's watch and protection...
Greater Adjutants at Prek Toal, spotted in 2012. Eleanor Briggs/Wildlife Conservation Society
Fri, 28 July 2017
Martin de Bourmont
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Some 175 endangered greater adjutant chicks have successfully taken flight from protected nests in Battambang’s Prek Toal Bird Sanctuary site this year, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced yesterday.
Growing as tall as 1.5 metres, the greater adjutant is the world’s largest species of stork, but only 800 to 1,000 mature birds currently exist worldwide, according to the WCS. Of those, about 150 to 200 pairs live in Prek Toal, which is the only greater adjutant breeding site in Southeast Asia and the second-largest in the world – after a colony of greater adjutants in Assam, India. WCS Communications Manager Eng Mengey said the organisation began protecting the Prek Toal nests in December and that the first chicks began to leave in April, with the last leaving at the end of last month.
Mengey said that 20 rangers from the local community worked with 20 Envirnment Ministry officials to patrol the area during the project. While the 175 chicks successfully took flight, poaching of greater adjutants continues outside the protected area, he said, and after the chicks leave ‘it is out of our control, they only come back during the breeding season’.
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