India is planning to send four tigers to Cambodia by the end of this
year in a bid to reintroduce the wild animals into Cambodia's forests.
One male and three female tigers from India's Western Ghats will be
transferred to the Cardamom Hills in Cambodia once authorities can work
out the logistics of the operation.
The move to reintroduce tigers into Cambodia comes after the country's last known tiger was filmed on a camera trap in in 2007.
Poaching and habitat loss have been cited among factors leading to
the tigers’ extinction in the wild. Cambodia says it will abide by
protocols established by the International Union for Conservation of
Nature (IUCN) for such reintroduction programmes.
India launched Project Tiger initiative in 1973, expanding its tiger
reserves to protect its tiger population, which is estimated to be 75%
of the global wild tiger population. Government data from 2022 reports
India's tiger population at 3,682.