“We set traps every night,” says a farmer from the central Cambodian province of Kampong Chhnang. “After setting them up, we sleep by the nets, sometimes in a hammock, sometimes in the fields.”
Samnang (not his real name) is from a village where nearly all men trap birds. They stretch thin nets up to 50m long next to flooded rice fields, and play bird calls through portable speakers.
“If many fly into the nets, we can catch close to ten or more in one night.”
The catch is then sold as wild meat at roadside stalls or a nearby market.
Samnang says hunters near the Tonle Sap River, where many birds gather, can trap 50 to 70 birds in one night.
Bird hunting is rampant in Cambodia and across mainland Southeast Asia, with over 500 species recorded as having been hunted in the past decade alone, according to research by conservation NGO BirdLife International, seen by Dialogue Earth.
A wide range of techniques are deployed: lines of hooks hidden in paddy fields, snares, artificial and live decoys, metal slingshots, poisons, glue sticks, airguns, homemade rifles, and even crossbow slingshots.
Among the most indiscriminate and deadly are mist nets. Cheap, easily accessible and requiring minimal effort, these nets are responsible, conservationists say, for the deaths of millions of migratory birds across Asia.
Southeast Asia has gained attention for its wildlife snaring crisis, where thousands of simple but cruelly efficient snares are laid in protected forests, to be sold for meat. Bird hunting, however, remains largely overlooked. In part this is because it spreads well beyond forests and protected areas, in agricultural land and wetlands.
“Empty forest” syndrome – where lush, seemingly intact landscapes have lost most of their animals to snares – is already being documented. Conservationists warn that without action, the situation could extend to wetlands and farmlands.
A thriving trade
Dialogue Earth found wild birds openly for sale in 12 locations across six Cambodian provinces.
In nearly every market visited, including in the capital Phnom Penh, bird sellers were easy to find. Along national highways linking provincial capitals to Phnom Penh, stalls displayed plucked or cooked birds: small weavers sold in bunches, doves, whistling ducks, rails, swamphens, herons and even the larger openbill storks.
One major site just outside the north-western city of Battambang had the largest display observed, with half a dozen stalls. Some sellers keep additional birds hidden in iceboxes. Beyond roadside trade, hunters like Samnang also supply middlemen and urban clients: “There are regular buyers from Phnom Penh,” he says. “We also send birds to them by vehicle.”
Bou Vorsak, CEO of conservation NGO NatureLife Cambodia, a BirdLife partner organisation, says the demand for wild bird meat stems from a desire to eat something more “natural” – a belief that it’s tastier, healthier and more energising than farmed alternatives.
Despite repeated law enforcement and awareness campaigns, Vorsak says, “people still stop the car to buy wild meat along the road, [or] go to a restaurant looking for wild meat.”
Avian defaunation
Hunting and agriculture are the leading threats to birds, mammals and amphibians across the world. A national checklist of Cambodian bird species identifies hunting “as the single greatest and ubiquitous threat” to the country’s birds.
While hunting has long been linked to the decline of rare and endangered species like the Bengal florican, spoon-billed sandpiper and yellow-breasted bunting, conservationists are now increasingly concerned about common birds, too.
“Most bird [species] are actually in decline,” especially migratory species wintering in Southeast Asia, says Ding Li Yong, the regional coordinator for migratory species at BirdLife Asia.
Yong is also lead author of a regional overview of bird-hunting practices released at the UN Environment Programme’s 2024 Convention on Migratory Species. Drawing on years of field surveys by local organisations, the report warns that hunting for consumption and trade is expected to “decimate the populations of erstwhile common and/or legally unprotected species, and especially species occurring outside protected areas”.
According to Yong, bird hunting “has increased across the whole of Southeast Asia, but decreased in specific protected zones”. The problem, he explains, is that protected areas disproportionately cover forests, along with a handful of wetlands linked to endangered species. But birds reliant on paddy fields, salt pans and floodplains fall through the gaps of site-based conservation programmes.
Law-enforcement challenges
Local authorities play a critical role in curbing wildlife crime, yet in Cambodia, conservationists consider enforcement patchy and weak throughout the country. Vorsak says commune councils and district officials need to recognise their role in stopping illegal bird hunting.
Selling wild-caught animals is illegal without a permit, but hunters and sellers operate anyway. Most local agencies lack the resources – and often the will – to intervene. Wildlife crimes are seen as minor, and village chiefs or security guards are often unwilling to report or arrest hunters from their own communities.
“They [the village police] let us trap freely in our own village,” says Samnang. “But if we go elsewhere, we get caught and have to pay.” Bribes typically range from KHR 30,000 to 50,000 (USD 7.50 to 12.50), and trapping equipment is sometimes confiscated.
Over the past two decades, enforcement agencies have seized birds and other animals from markets and roadside stalls, leading to reductions in visible trade. One of the country’s most notorious bird-selling hotspots is Batheay, in south-central Kampong Cham province. For over a decade, it has been subject to periodic crackdowns, usually triggered by media reports.
When Dialogue Earth visited the site eight months after a police raid, a vendor was openly selling birds. One person at the site said half a dozen police vehicles arrived shortly after a video on local media surfaced online showing birds, turtles and monitor lizards for sale.
“There were no arrests. They just warned us not to sell anymore,” the person said. Her stall is lined with rows of dry fish that she said are selling much better than wild animals, though she confesses to buying birds for her family occasionally. “Those who hunt still hunt,” she added.
Authorities later denied the wildlife trade was still active in the area, claiming the footage was old.
Across the road, another vendor was selling crakes and whistling ducks. She defended her suppliers, hunters in the village: “They’re extremely poor. They don’t even have proper houses – just leaf roofs that leak in the rain. When they catch something, they can buy rice.”
Hunting for subsistence
“Poverty is one of the main drivers of hunting,” confirms Vorsak of NatureLife Cambodia.
Boeung Prek Lapouv, in the Lower Mekong Delta, is a candidate to become a Ramsar site, a wetland of international importance. Vorsak says local people have told him: “I know this is a protected area – I shouldn’t hunt or fish illegally – but what else can I do? I need food for my family.”
The written agreement system, where offenders sign a pledge not to repeat wildlife crimes, is deployed by rangers when they believe the offender to be of low income. Vorsak notes that the system is ineffective as the reoffending rate is high, but explains that rangers often hesitate to take harsher measures against an already vulnerable household.
An analysis of Cambodia government datasets by a Monash University researcher found a strong correlation between low income, hunting and wild-meat consumption. The researcher noted the data suggested “hunting in rural Cambodia is mostly driven by subsistence concerns”. Broadly, when poor rural families lose income, for instance due to lower agricultural yields caused by rainfall shocks, they often turn to hunting as a coping strategy.
Not all hunting is for subsistence, however. A 2019 survey by NatureLife Cambodia, seen by Dialogue Earth, characterised professional hunters as using mist nets hundreds of metres long, capable of trapping large numbers of birds – a description corroborated by local media reports.
But most of the hunted wildlife is for domestic consumption rather than sold, says Emiel De Lange, conservation impact technical advisor at Wildlife Conservation Society Cambodia. “What you see in the market is relatively small compared to what’s being consumed by people,” he adds.
Hunting for solutions
A conservationist working on Cambodia’s wildlife trade, speaking on condition of anonymity, says birds receive far less legal scrutiny than mammals, despite enjoying some level of protection under existing laws. A dedicated bird protection law, the conservationist argues, could help address that gap and prevent bird hunting from being dismissed as a minor issue.
Neighbouring Vietnam has already taken this step. In 2022, the government passed Directive 4, a sweeping law aimed at curbing a growing and more organised wild-bird trade driven by increasing demand from a rising middle class for bird meat in restaurants.
Across the region, bird conservationists also want restrictions on hunting gear, which remains widely available in local markets and online. Authorities in China, for instance, have already banned the sale of mist nets and other hunting tools. With physical locations more controlled and sellers resorting to selling on the internet, online platforms have stepped up their efforts to remove hunting tools and display warnings when users search for them.
Stricter enforcement in wildlife sanctuaries is essential, but for such enforcement to be effective, governments must also work to improve livelihoods, notes Vorsak.
De Lange agrees. “By criminalising that [hunting] behaviour … you’re imposing costs on the most vulnerable people in society,” he says.
One tool De Lange has been researching is conservation-focused cash transfers: small daily allowances, equivalent to the poverty line rate, or about USD 2.70 per person, to help Cambodia’s poorest meet basic needs and reduce reliance on hunting.
De Lange stresses that such payments are not a silver bullet, but one piece of a broader solution, alongside education, awareness and even social marketing to shift perceptions around eating wild meat.
Elsewhere in mainland Southeast Asia, hunting has largely depleted bird populations in Vietnam and Laos. However, there is cautious optimism in Thailand. Once common, bird hunting has dropped dramatically over the last three decades. As incomes rose and people moved to cities, the Thai government invested in conservation and extended protection to nearly all native birds – more than 1,000 species, the BirdLife report notes.
“In general, attitudes towards wildlife in Thailand [are] quite positive,” says Yong. “That’s not to say there are no conservation problems,” he added, such as tourism and the exotic pet trade.
K. Yoganand, former regional lead for wildlife and wildlife crime at WWF, says Cambodia’s future will depend not just on policy, but on whether political elites embrace conservation and, crucially, ensure the benefits of economic development are more evenly shared.
“Economically, the country will grow, but is the wealth going to be concentrated in a small minority or is it going to be more widely distributed? I think that will drive which trajectory it’s going to take.”
Additional reporting by Nehru Pry and Jessie Li.
This article was produced with support from Transparency International Cambodia.
