Help Care for Rescued Animals in Cambodia

With the rainy season finally behind us, the animals at Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Centre are in birthing mode. Many new babies have been born in the past few months as part of our captive breeding program and we have some adorable newly rescued babies at the Centre as well. This update for our GlobalGiving donors features some of the Centre’s new life highlights.

In mid-December, our Wildlife Rapid Rescue Team brought another infant black-shanked douc langur to the Centre. As you may remember from previous reports, these Critically Endangered primates are extremely sensitive and notoriously difficult to raise in captivity. Newcomer ‘You-G’ arrived quite weak but has done very well under the care of our keepers who have hand-raised several other doucs since 2020.

Eld’s deer is Red-Listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as Endangered, and the rare siamensis sub-species that we have at Phnom Tamao is critically threatened. Starting with a single founding male and female rescued from different parts of Cambodia in 2001, we have created a new population at Phnom Tamao that currently numbers 19 living in enclosures and at least 30 free-roaming animals that were released from or born in the forest surrounding the Centre. 1 new fawn captive-born in November 2022 and another 3 born in December are the latest additions to our growing Eld’s deer herds living in enclosures. To add to this, during the current breeding season at least another 6 fawns have been born in the forest to our released animals.

Sambar, which is IUCN Red-Listed as Vulnerable, is another deer species that we have successfully bred and released into the Phnom Tamao forest in relatively large numbers. A total of 8 baby sambar were born from October-December 2022 within the Centre, including an albino fawn, and another 4 were born in January 2023.

Wild boar is not a globally threatened species, but our local population at Phnom Tamao was decimated in 2020-2021 by African swine fever, which crept in from domestic pigs at local farms that surround the Centre. The disease killed off most of the boar at Phnom Tamao, both in captivity and living in the forest. So we are pleased that 15 baby boar were captive-born in January. Ultimately we should be able to release them into the forest to bolster the remaining population, which is also increasing steadily once again.

Similarly the leopard cat, red muntjac and black-crowned night-heron are species listed as of Least Concern for the IUCN. Nonetheless, these animals are few and far between in Cambodia and we are happy whenever new lives join their ranks. In January, kindly villagers from Kampong Speu Province contacted our staff to donate 3 leopard cat kittens and about a week later our Rescue Team brought a tiny muntjac rescued in Mondulkiri Province to the Nursery for hand-raising. 2 muntjac fawns were also born to captive parents in January, and 2 black-crowned night heron chicks hatched in the Phnom Tamao aviaries.

Perhaps the most unusual recent ‘baby’ story involves the Critically Endangered pangolin. The Team has rescued several pangolins recently, including a mother who was nursing a tiny infant. What usually happens when a mother is disturbed is she neglects or even kills her baby. This mother was different! She is now being looked after at our Baby Nursery at Phnom Tamao and has continued to care for her infant, which is not yet eating the adult pangolin diet of ants and termites but is growing nicely on mother’s milk.

Thank you for caring about rescued wildlife as much as we do. Your donations help us to feed and care for so many animals each month and to ensure that as many rescued and captive-born animals as possible are released into protected habitat to help rebuild dwindling wildlife populations. Thank you so much for your support!