What is the impact on Cambodia due to wildlife extinction?

Question

Cambodia has a lot of wildlife on the brink of extinction if not already extinct. I was just wondering what the impact of this wildlife extinction was on Cambodia? Thanks ahead of time to anyone who helps.

Answer 1

Any extinction of wildlife species lowers biodiversity. Biodiversity is important because it gives a widely varied set of species, the balance between which is very robust and resistant to disaster. Reduce the number of species, and each of the remaining species takes up a larger fraction of that biome, affecting it more directly.

By example consider a the following very simple example:
Two species: deer and grass.
Deer eat grass, deer thrive.
Deer thrive, more deer produced, which eat more grass.
More Deer eat all grass. Deer populatin crashes.
Grass rebounds without deer eating it, grows wildly. Wildfire wipes out tall grass, where shorter deer tended grass would be ok.
The two species are vulnerable to wild swings in population as conditions change.

Now consider an addition:
Three species- Grass, Deer, Lions
Deer eat grass, lions eat deer.
When deer eat lots of grass, there are more deer. Lions eat deer, there are less deer. These remain in balance, grass population remains constant.

The more species involved, the more subtle the changes become, keeping things stable.

Also, the more species there are, the more things humans can use, which is also good.

Answer 2

I agree with you, there are a lot of species in Cambodia that are extinct, or on the brink of extinction. Admittedly, in the last 4-5 years the Wildlife people have discovered several species still alive that were thought to be extinct due to the Second Indochina War (Vietnam War) actions in Cambodia (unofficially 1965-1970 and officially 1970-1975). The wildlife people are attempting to breed these species.

Because of the Dams being built on the Mekong in China as part of the Mekong River Project (Five countries involved -- China, Myanamar (Burma), Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam) -- the fishing industry in Cambodia is in a major decline and at least two species of Mekong fish, including one that grows to over a metre long and looks like a catfish, is rarely found in recent years and believed to be on the brink of extinction. For the same reason, the Dams, irrigation is less during the wet season and that leads to a lowering of the rice crop.