Southern Cardamom

The Cardamom Mountains boast one of Southeast Asia’s last pristine rainforests, a densely forested landscape that stretches across southwestern Cambodia. This remote region remained undisturbed for decades, shaped by its turbulent past as the final stronghold of the Khmer Rouge. The presence of guerilla warfare and residual land mines long deterred outside contact, allowing the forest to thrive in isolation. In recent years, the Cardamoms have become more accessible, leaving the area increasingly exposed and vulnerable to deforestation. Between 2001 and 2023, Cambodia lost roughly a third of its forests, highlighting the urgent need to protect the Cardamoms as one of the nation’s largest remaining wilderness areas.

The Cardamom Rainforest is part of the Indo-Burma Hotspot, one of the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots. The region is a mosaic of monsoon forests, and wetlands that provide a critical habitat for over 150 threatened wildlife species including clouded leopards, sun bears, and critically endangered Siamese crocodiles and pangolins. The rainforest is also an important watershed, feeding 22 major rivers that flow into one of Southeast Asia’s largest intact mangrove ecosystems. 

The Cardamoms’ rich biodiversity and unspoiled landscapes make the region an attractive ecotourism destination. Visitors are drawn to its majestic waterfalls, untouched coastlines, and dense rainforests, with opportunities to go hiking, kayaking, and wildlife watching. The area is one of the few places where rare animals such as elephants and gibbons can be seen in their natural habitats. With its unspoiled beauty and biodiversity, this off-the-beaten-path destination is gradually gaining interest among nature lovers and eco-tourists. 

Unfortunately, years of hunting have taken a toll on the region’s wildlife. Wild animals are routinely poached and sold for meat, traditional medicine, or the exotic pet trade. To make matters worse, hunters’ snare traps often capture other animals unintentionally. In the early 2000s, elephants and tigers were intensely poached in the Cardamom region. Today, only around 500 wild Asian elephants remain in Cambodia, while tigers haven’t been seen since 2007 and are considered functionally extinct in the country. 

The Cardamoms serve as a vital sanctuary, supporting these species’ survival and potential recovery. They are home to one of Cambodia’s last significant elephant populations and one of Asia’s final seven elephant corridors. As forests across Asia become increasingly fragmented, these corridors link them together, allowing elephants to move safely between habitats, reducing human-wildlife conflict, and connecting herds. The Cardamoms have also been identified as a prime site for tiger reintroduction, with renewed conservation efforts aiming to bring the big cat back to the region.

Like many mountainous areas in Cambodia, the remote villages in the Cardamom Mountains experience high poverty rates. Communities rely on rice cultivation and other subsistence agriculture for survival, utilizing destructive slash-and-burn techniques to clear forests. With limited employment opportunities, many people turn to harmful activities such as illegal logging and firewood gathering for extra income. Children often work on family farms instead of getting an education, further entrenching the cycle of poverty and deforestation.

New arrivals to the region also drive deforestation in the Cardamoms. Migrants clear forested land to build homes and farms as they settle the area. Additionally, forests are cleared by private companies for large industrial plantations and by speculators seeking to profit from land sales. These activities, made easier by weak land rights and enforcement, accelerate forest loss and threaten the land and resources that local communities rely on. If deforestation from agriculture continues at its current pace, it could result in the loss of more than 1,094,000 acres (442,000 hectares) and severely affect the 16,000 people living in the area.