Cambodia aims to import four tigers from India this year as part of an agreement with New Delhi, an environmental official announced Monday.
This initiative is intended to bolster the dwindling population of big cats in the kingdom, which once thrived in Cambodia's dry forests but has since been decimated by extensive poaching of both tigers and their prey.
The last sighting of a tiger in the Southeast Asian kingdom was from a camera trap in 2007 and the cats were declared "functionally extinct" in Cambodia in 2016.
One male and three female tigers "could arrive in Cambodia at the end of 2024," Khvay Atitya, spokesperson for the Environment Ministry, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The cats will be sent to a 90-hectare (222-acre) forest inside the Tatai Wildlife Sanctuary in western Koh Kong province to acclimatize before being released into the wild, he said.
He did not give details about what type of tiger would be imported from India.
Officials this week began installing more than 400 cameras at 1-kilometer intervals in the reserve in the Cardamom Mountains to monitor wildlife, particularly animals that tigers prey upon such as deer and boar, he said.
The information from the cameras "will help with the breeding of tigers," Khvay Atitya said.
Twelve more tigers will be imported over the next five years if the project goes smoothly, he said.
Deforestation and poaching have devastated tiger numbers across Asia.
Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam have all lost their native populations, while Myanmar is thought to have just 23 tigers left in the wild.
Cambodia and India signed a memorandum of understanding in 2022 on restoring tigers and their habitats.
India's wild tiger population was estimated to have exceeded 3,600, according to government figures released last year, following a massive conservation campaign.
