Members of the community in and around the O’Koki protected area found six wild boars dead from poacher’s snares near the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary in Ratanakkiri province.

The boars were discovered by villagers while they were patrolling the forest in early April according to Bou Vorsak, Cambodia programme manager at BirdLife International.

“These six wild boars were already rotting, having been trapped in these snares and left to die. This shows that snares not only kill wild animals – they do so indiscriminately and often pointlessly,” he said.

He added that besides the six boar snares, the patrolmen had removed 45 more of them in the area but they didn’t encounter any suspects in the forest during their patrol.

Vorsak also called on the government to do more to stop illegal hunting and trapping and the consumption of wild animal meat.

O’Koki community member Sam Ol told The Post that poachers had given up on hunting animals with guns and were now just laying huge numbers of snares to catch them – causing wild animal population numbers to decline sharply.

Sam Ol added that during a patrol in February his group was joined by rangers, police officials and village security guards and they had found and rescued a giant ibis from a snare.

Ratanakkiri provincial environment department director Phon Khemrin told The Post that besides patrolling protected areas the rangers had often educated residents about the benefits of protecting the environment, wild animals and other natural resources and this was clearly an effective approach as demonstrated by the community’s patrols.

“The work of educating people to stop consuming the meat of wild animals, stop hunting, stop laying snares and stop clearing land illegally in wildlife sanctuaries must continue because it does show positive results,” he said.