Help Bring Wildlife Back to Angkor Forest

In the past few months, we have experienced some challenges with our project to Help Bring Wildlife Back to Angkor Forest. Baray and Saranick, the first pileated gibbon pair released, now have only one of their ‘children’ with them, Konteslong. As described in prior reports, first born Ping-peeung and her younger brother, Chung-ruth, have reached adulthood and ‘left home.’

As detailed in our January report, Chung-ruth was transferred in October 2022 from his parent’s territory to the release enclosure at the feeding site for the second released pair’s family. You will remember Tevy’s partner, Bayon, died in March 2021, leaving her with 3 youngsters, all believed to be female. From their interactions while he was still enclosed, Chung-ruth was clearly enamored with first-born daughter, A-ping. In February 2023 we released him to pair with A-ping and captured Tevy and enclosed her instead. A-ping and Chung-ruth get on well, they are clearly bonding and also duet together, a sure sign of a gibbon’s love. There was some friction between the new pair and Tevy’s youngest daughter, Dun-kow who we captured and enclosed with her mother. Although we have placed 2 food baskets in the trees around 100 meters away from Tevy’s enclosure, A-ping and Chung-ruth still return to harass Tevy to such an extent that it is clearly not going to be an option to release her again here. Moving her and Dun-kow away is probably going to be our best option if we are to keep the project running smoothly. Gibbons are territorial apes and facilitating new pairs for wild-born offspring while resolving these kinds of conflicts will be an ongoing issue as the first generation born in the forest comes of age.

Tevy’s second infant, Kandop, seemed to be coping well alongside the new pair; however in mid-May she disappeared, giving us several sleepless nights. Keepers Sarin and Rith searched for her every day and towards the end of June they found her at Preah Kan Temple, several kilometers away. Kandop’s birthday is August 2^nd and at just 5 years she is quite young to be a solo gibbon – but she is still on her own and looks great considering what she has been through. We tied a food basket in a tree and Kandop feeds there, but she is clearly able to look after herself in the forest as sometimes she is not seen for days.

In May, Chung-ruth’s sister Ping-peeung and her captive-born mate, Bakheng, occasionally did not come to feed, and sometimes Bakheng came alone, although he usually follows Ping-peeung, who is more confident in the forest as the first gibbon wild-born to released parents. The pair travel widely around Lake Santamea, and have been seen at a variety of Temples and the construction site behind the Elephant Terrace. Ping-peeung is particularly mobile. We hope she will settle down, but at this stage it is not something to be particularly concerned about.

Pompoy and Borei, the third gibbon pair we released, and their one year old, Mey-Ambaugh, are fine. They are always around for morning and evening feeds and have not had any problems, so far. The young gibbon is precocious for its age and regularly leaves mother, moving independently along the branches.

These days our smooth-coated otters are causing more concern than the gibbons. The founding female, released in 2019, and the two young males, transferred from PTWRC that escaped in 2022, have continued to feed together most days. As detailed in our April 2022 report, they were first seen with 5 new pups in January 2023, although one pup was smaller and quickly disappeared. Towards the end of May, a female otter pup was found dead in a snare not far from the enclosure where they return for feedings. The snare had clearly been set specifically to trap an otter, such was its position, probably by an illegal fisherman, disgruntled that some of his fishing gear was removed by our Government counterpart APSARA, which manages Angkor Archeological Park. Initially we were concerned that it was the mother female, but fortunately this was not the case. Now Sarin and Rith are being extra vigilant to guard against a repeat.

There has been another event that, in retrospect, I feel was bound to happen, but nonetheless it worried us for a short time. One of the adult male otters has been driven out of the group, by his brother, the alpha male. The isolated male is not being allowed to eat, travel or interact with the remaining 5 otters. When not hunting, he lives alone in a hole the otters dug long ago under their enclosure. It is hard to know whether he manages to catch some of the fish we provide, that the others have missed – he is very secretive in his movements. He looks fine. Clearly adversity – or necessity – has brought his natural instincts to the fore. No longer able to rely on our hand-outs, he is fending for himself…and in his own way, perhaps he is also telling me that I should not worry quite so much about the animals we release. They usually know what to do.

Thank you so much for supporting our work to repopulate Angkor’s wildlife. It is a long and experimental path that we continue to navigate. Funding from donors like you means a lot to us, and, like our animals, we usually figure out what to do.

It has been a while since we featured Angkor’s smooth-coated otters in our donor update and now we have some exciting news to share. Late last year, when the released otters came for supplemental fish our Angkor staff noticed that the female was looking round and her nipples plump. On January 23 the otters were first seen with 5 new pups!

As you may remember from previous reports, of the original family brought from Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Centre in November 2019 only the founding female otter remains in Angkor. After their release, the family traveled widely and sometimes did not return for the supplemental fish we provide, for a few days in a row, indicating that they were catching fish and had the skills to survive in the wild. However, the Angkor Archeological Park is not an entirely wild landscape and the female’s original partner and offspring disappeared one by one between 2020 and early 2022. On a few occasions our otters were found in fishing nets and traps, placed in the lakes and waterways of Angkor. Otters may drown if caught in a submerged net or fishermen may kill them if they find them in their traps. We believe this is what befell the missing otters and wrote a letter of explanation to the Director of APSARA, the managing government authority, in the hope that he could put an end to the fishing in Angkor.

To boost the otter population in Angkor, in November 2021 we transferred two young male smooth-coated otters that had been born at Phnom Tamao. Initially the new otters were housed in a small cage built inside the otter enclosure to acclimatize and introduce them to the already released otters. In March 2022, we released the two young males into the main enclosure and within two days they had escaped into the surrounding forest with the founding female otter. One of these males is the father of the new pups.

The family often sleeps in the hole under the small cage inside the enclosure. As the pups have grown, the group has started traveling further away again and occasionally the otters do not come to feed. One pup was smaller than the others, but seemed fine through February. In late March, this smallest pup wasn’t seen for 3 days and it was not in the hole when the keepers’ checked. Recently, only 4 pups have been spotted with the adults and we believe the smallest one may have died. It is difficult to get good photographs of otters as they are seldom still for long, but the keepers’ recently captured this short video of the 3 adults and 1 pup rolling on the forest floor.

Overall, our project to reintroduce native wildlife species back into Angkor is progressing well. The released pileated gibbons and their offspring are fine. The wreathed and great hornbills released in December 2021 are still around – in mid-March APSARA workers reported seeing a few perched together in a big tree in front of the Angkor Wat temple. We have also released a total of 9 green peafowl thus far, and one of the females is now sitting on a clutch of 5 eggs in the APSARA tree nursery. Hopefully we will have some peacock chicks to report on next time!

Loyal supporters like you who share our long-term vision of restoring natural heritage in the heart of Cambodia’s most important cultural heritage site is what makes this exciting project possible. Thank you so much!

Links:

• Otter Activity at Angkor