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Botum Sakor National Park
Botum Sakor National Park is the biggest national park of Cambodia. It's situated on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand. Botum Sakor (or Botumsakor) is a peninsula projecting southwest from the Cardamom Mountains.
The majority of Botum Sakor’s area comprises gently sloping lowland covered by evergreen wood and grasslands, emerging in coastal flood plains with mangrove and swamp forests. The Park is surrounded by sea in the East, South, and West and the coastline is fringed with relatively intact mangrove forests.
The national park of Botum Sakor has a very rich and varied wildlife that is unique in the world. The park is home to many endangered species such as the Asian Elephant, Indochinese Tiger, Clouded Leopard, Turtle and Sun Bear to name a few. Most of the many reptiles of Botum Sakor are snakes, including charismatic species such as the king cobra and the Malay pit viper. Snakes are regularly seen, and subsequently hacked to death by local residents, at local plantations.
There is also a known small population of Siamese crocodiles in some of the parks creeks. Cambodia in fact retains the world's largest population of this critically endangered species, which was recently thought to be extinct even.
Disturbance of Botum Sakor National Park is extremely high. In the beginning of the new millenium there was illegal logging of evergreen forest (~30 km²/year). These initial crimes and large scale destructive activities, was eventually halted, but the national park is now facing an increasing threat of destruction under the pretext of so-called development.
Poaching in Cambodias national parks remains extremely rampant and Botum Sakor is no exclusion to this trend. The methods that are most disturbing in Botum Sakor are the setting of snares, and the opportunistic hunting of small mammal species for food.
The poaching in Cambodia have many reasons, but one of the reasons in Botum Sakor National Park is feeding the traditional Chinese medicinal market.
Getting there: Activities:
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