Virachey

Virachey National Park was established in 1993 in north-eastern Cambodia, between the provinces of Ratanakiri and Stung Treng, next to the borders with Laos and Vietnam, and protects some 3,325 km². It is one of the largest in the country and an ASEAN Heritage Park.

Its territory is mountainous and very hard to reach, with montane evergreen forest, mixed woodland and highland savannahs, crossed by the Sesan and Sekong rivers. That inaccessibility has preserved one of the last blocks of continuous forest in northern Indochina, and it forms a cross-border complex with protected areas in Laos and Vietnam.

Camera-trap surveys have documented yellow-cheeked gibbon, sun bear, sloth bear, Asian elephant and wild cats, although snaring, a practice widespread throughout the region, has decimated the populations. The park is the territory of the Brao, Kavet and Kreung peoples, who maintain shifting cultivation and a ritual relationship with particular places in the forest. The main threats are illegal logging of precious timber, economic land concessions around its edges and mining projects.