Guns, traps, snares and masks confiscated in the Nam Et Phou Louey National Protected Area
Snares Nearly 1000 guns have been confiscated at Nam Et Phou Louey and over 3000 snares from Nam Kading in the last three years.
Claw trap These illegal traps mostly come from Vietnam and are used to catch tigers and other large mammals in Nam Et Phou Louey National Protected Area. Occasionally people are caught in them and need help to escape and to get out of the forest with the injuries. People who set these traps have been arrested, fined and imprisoned.
Guns
Monkey bones These are the bones of over a 100 monkeys that were confiscated by law enforcement officers from a bus on Highway 8 on its way to a neighboring country. TRAFFIC – an international organization that monitors wildlife trade - estimates the only 2% of illegal wildlife trade is intercepted.
Turtle shell One of thousands of turtles killed for sale across Laos. Turtles are one of the animal groups most threatened by wildlife trade. Around 12 million turtles are thought to be traded in China each year.
Gaur vs Buffalo
Can you see the difference?
Gaur
Buffalo
Gaur: Shoulder Height: 170-220 cm, weight 1000-1500 kg, length 2.0-3.6 m – the largest of the wild cattle.
Asian buffalo: Shoulder height: 1.5 – 1.9 m (3). Weight, up to 1200kg, length 2.4 - 3m
Camera traps The photos in this exhibition were taken with camera traps like these. They detect animals with heat motion sensors.
They are set up in the forest in places were we hope to find the animals we want to photograph – often several days’ walk from the road or villages.
To count tigers we need to be able to see the stripes on both sides of each animal, so we set up the camera on each side of a track or clearing facing each other.
The cameras are mounted on trees about 45cm above the ground to try to be the right height for tigers – but it’s hard to be just right for all sizes of animal.
These camera traps use film. Next year we are going to get new digital camera traps and we should be able to get even better photos.
