After a too long silence, here a short summary of what has happened with our PNM conservation project.

- We built two ranger stations, engaged now 4 rangers, Noeun, the Cambodian site manager and Bindiya, who has been managing a tiger reserve in India and has all the experience needed for our project. Their first tasks are protection (esp. logging and illegal fishing methods) and demarkation of the area.

- We got visitors from the San Francisco University (Gretchen Coffmann, Assistant Professor, and wetland restoration specialist, together with David McGuire, marine biologist, specialized in sharks and coral). Their reaction on the PNM mangroves on their blogspot speaks for itself: "The diversity and the age of the mangroves are remarkable, with the largest trunks I have seen." and "There are few large undisturbed mangrove forests like these left along the coast".

In general the protection of the area works, but last month the rangers found an area where quite a number of trees were cut. They are trying to find out who were behind this. So it is probably necessary to do more patrolling.

Special skies on the day Howie & Karen visited PNM

Painted Stork on the mudflats of Kompong Smatj River

Van Hasselt's Sunbird