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Mongabay – How Laos lost its tigers

WildCRU’s Akchousanh Rasphone featured in Mongabay, highlighting her research on large carnivores in Nam et-Phou Louey, Laos:

‘A new paper in Global Conservation and Ecology finds that the last tigers of Laos vanished shortly after 2013 from Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area. And the scientists believe it was most likely a surge in snaring that did them in, despite large-scale investments in the park, relative to the region. With the loss of tigers in Laos’s largest protected area, the tiger is most likely extinct in Laos, as it probably is in both Cambodia and Vietnam. That’s an area significantly larger than Texas in Southeast Asia that’s now bereft of its proper top predator.’

Rasphone, A., Kéry, M., Kamler, J.F., Macdonald, D.W., Documenting the demise of tiger and leopard, and the status of other carnivores and prey, in Lao PDR’s most prized protected area: Nam et – Phou louey, Global Ecology and Conservation (2019), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2019.e00766

Read the full article here.