Law Enforcement

South East Asia is at the epicenter of the global extinction crisis and the majority of the region’s Protected Areas are ‘paper parks’ with insufficient resources, capacity, or supervision to achieve effective species conservation. Wildlife Alliance delivers a unique and successful model of hands-on direct protection to forests and wildlife which focuses on creating and managing high performance teams of forest rangers.

Wildlife Alliance manages 8 ranger stations with an average of 8,000 of patrols covering 119,552 km each year. These rangers have the responsibility of arresting poachers, dismantling sawmill operations inside protected forest, inhibiting people from grabbing forest land for their private property, and confiscating bulldozers and chainsaws used to illegally cut timber. When offenders are caught, Wildlife Alliance takes a hands-on approach by accompanying offenders to court and following up on all court cases to ensure the proper legal procedures are applied.

Constant vigilance is the cost of keeping the Cardamom Rainforest safe and maintaining its high level of biodiversity. Without Wildlife Alliance’s continued support, the Southern Cardamom tropical rainforest is at risk of being cleared for conversion to agriculture, industry and real estate sales. Wildlife Alliance approach has proven successful in maintaining continuous rainforest cover in the Cardamom Mountains, achieved zero elephant poaching since 2006, and supported the recovery of populations of ungulates and small-medium carnivores.