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A former poacher now turned conservationist for the World Wildlife Fund. It seems an impossible irony, but it’s true. Lean Kha used to shoot dozens of endangered species, including bears, tigers, and elephants, in his native Cambodia but now it’s his mission to protect them. What happened? Yahoo News has the full details.
To understand the transformation we need to examine Kha’s background. He started hunting at 13 years old, recruited by soldiers for Khmer Rouge. Kha hunted not for sport, not to collect hides with which to decorate his walls, but to support himself and his family.
He’d sell many of the animals he killed, though he’d keep some wild deer and pigs to feed his family. Income was still sparse, and sometimes Kha would be paid for his game in bags of rice.
Kha continued on like this, not having any better options, for decades. Until finally, the Cambodian government came together with conservation groups such as the WWF to form a new initiative: offer poachers regular salaries to protect the wildlife in national forests.
Cambodia wants to turn its Mondulkiri Protected Forest into an eco-tourism site. As such they have hired 10 former poachers like Kha to act as wildlife rangers. For the moment their main duty is to patrol the woods to protect it from illegal hunting. Who better to combat poaching than someone who practiced it not out of sport but out of necessity for almost 30 years?
“At that time [when Kha started poaching] I was totally ignorant,” Kha said. “I didn’t know the value of animals. I had never heard of wildlife conservation.” But now Kha wants to make up for, in his own words, “my past sins.”
My naive childhood self would have been completely angry at Kha for half a lifetime spent diminishing the endangered species of Cambodia. But I know better now. The Mondulkiri province in Cambodia is rife with poverty, and people do what they must to survive. I may love and want to protect animals, but it’s more important that the people of Mondulkiri can make a living.
What a fantastic program, then, by the Cambodian government. They’re both creating jobs and protecting native animals. And it’s working. In the past year, officials have arrested eight poachers caught with endangered and rare species. Even more encouraging, sightings of many local endangered animals—Asian elephants, rare vultures, black bears, leopards, wild cattle, Eld’s Deer—have increased.
The WWF provides some financial support for the project, enabling Kha and his colleagues to spend significant time patrolling the forests to protect the animals.
For Kha, it’s the ideal vocation. “Nowadays, I feel very happy,” he said. “All of us want to… preserve rare wildlife so that they will survive for the next generation.”
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*(This image by wwarby is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
