Helicopter translocation brings isolated banteng to safer grounds in Cambodia

Earlier this month, a team of conservationists translocated 16 critically endangered banteng into Siem Pang Wildlife Sanctuary in northeast Cambodia in a bid to boost numbers that had dwindled to critical levels.

The group of wild cattle was captured and transported from a nearby unprotected forest facing imminent conversion to farmland. The operation was the second phase of largescale efforts to save the herd, led by Cambodia-based social enterprise Rising Phoenix in partnership with local wildlife authorities.

“With proper law enforcement, no poaching and suitable habitat in Siem Pang, I think there is a very positive future for them,” said Romain Legrand, biodiversity research and monitoring manager with Rising Phoenix. “The population is going to grow quickly, I’m sure.”

Together with the first translocation carried out in May 2025, the recent operation brings the total rehomed banteng (Bos javanicus) population in the reserve to 32 individuals, including breeding-age adults and calves, according to Legrand.

Banteng are strikingly patterned bovids, their bright white legs and snowy rumps contrasting sharply against their russet coats. The species used to range across Southeast Asia, with Cambodia’s once-extensive dry dipterocarp forests home to a significant portion of the global population.

However, decades of deforestation and hunting for their meat, horns and hides have decimated their numbers — the latest IUCN Red List assessment puts their global population at no more than 8,000 individuals. In Cambodia, the species hangs on as sporadic groups eking out an existence in a handful of isolated forest patches.

While tigers and most likely leopards are no longer found in Cambodia, banteng are an important component of big cat diets in neighboring countries, such as Thailand.

From peril to rescue

Plans for the translocation emerged in 2024 when Rising Phoenix teams discovered a small breeding group of banteng in a former economic land concession roughly 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of Siem Pang. As agricultural expansion and deforestation chewed into their habitat, several individuals had already fallen victim to poachers.

“If they stayed there, they would have no future,” Legrand told Mongabay. “We found only the skin left behind one morning, everything else was gone. We had to dispatch rangers on the ground to monitor the animals 24/7 so that no more poaching happened [until] we could capture and translocate them.”

Spurred by the urgency of the situation, Rising Phoenix, who have been working to preserve Siem Pang Wildlife Sanctuary since 2015, began rescuing the herd in May 2025. But it was no simple task. Adult banteng can tip the scales at up to 800 kilograms (1,764 pounds). Moving so many large mammals required ingenuity, machinery and adequate funding, including helicopters, trucks and at least 50 personnel, according to Legrand.

“For weeks, we’d been chasing the banteng, trying to get them into the truck using a boma [a fence-like funnel made of sheeting]. It was very challenging. We’d spent countless nights in the field,” Legrand said, recalling the team’s initial ground-based tactics. Once they began using helicopters on the advice of Conservation Solutions, a leading wildlife capture operator based in South Africa, they met with success. “We caught 16 in just four days using the helicopter.”

To corral the banteng, the team used drones to locate the herd and then deployed the helicopter to drive them toward a collection truck, into which they were loaded and immediately taken to the wildlife sanctuary for release.

The makings of a viable population

While a few individuals remain at the degraded capture site, Legrand said he’s wholeheartedly confident they’ve now rehomed a sufficient number to Siem Pang to ensure a viable population in the reserve. Post-release monitoring using vehicle surveys and thermal imaging drones has revealed two new calves among the cohort translocated in 2025, he noted, indicating they’re adapting well to their new surroundings.

Siem Pang Wildlife Sanctuary spans 132,700 hectares (327,910 acres) of semi-evergreen and dry dipterocarp forests. It’s perhaps best known for its significant populations of five critically endangered bird species, including Cambodia’s national emblem, the giant ibis (Thaumatibis gigantea), and represents one of Cambodia’s best-protected reserves, according to Legrand.

Formerly managed by the Ministry of Environment Protection alongside Rising Phoenix, the reserve is monitored by community rangers who work with local law enforcement to patrol and remove snares. Premium price farming programs, such as “Ibis Rice” also aim to build local support for conservation and incentivize wildlife-friendly production.

In addition to the banteng, Siem Pang has also been the focus of other rewilding efforts, including the release of more than 40 Siamese crocodiles since 2022 that gave rise to evidence of hatching and young in 2024.

An extreme, but increasingly necessary, measure

The broader picture across Cambodia is not so rosy, however. Rampant habitat loss, natural resource extraction and a lack of wildlife law enforcement are reshaping ecosystems and narrowing the future for wildlife. The country lost roughly one-third of its tree cover over the past two and a half decades, according to Global Forest Watch data, including inside of seemingly protected areas.

Experts say translocation of isolated animals away from frontiers of development, as done for the banteng, could offer a viable future for conservation in the face of such relentless pressure.

“We can no longer just essentially sit and watch critically endangered species go extinct in sites that are poorly protected,” Thomas Gray, tiger landscape and recovery lead at WWF, told Mongabay. “Securing these populations in well-managed [areas] is a really good conservation idea.”

Gray said that shifting large mammals with the aid of helicopters might seem like an extreme intervention, but it’s a conservation approach that could maximize the impact of often limited funding and resources.

“If we can concentrate management effectiveness [and] investment in a few really important places that cover the spectrum of habitats across Cambodia, I think that’s a really sustainable way to protect a lot of these species whilst hopefully allowing economic development in some of these other areas,” Gray said.

Legrand said the translocation demonstrates that large-scale rewilding is possible in Cambodia when backed by adequate funding and robust protected area management. The translocation of the banteng was supported by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), Swiss-based Fondation Segré and private donors.

“Creating protected areas and hoping that wildlife populations will recover without intervention is unrealistic,” said Jonathan Eames, CEO of Rising Phoenix. “There are many other banteng herds trapped in isolated forest patches across Cambodia that will die from illegal poaching unless translocated using these same techniques.”

Banner image: Banteng are herded into the collection truck within a deforested former economic land concession in northeast Cambodia. Image courtesy of Jeremy Holden © Rising Phoenix.

Carolyn Cowan is a staff writer for Mongabay.

See related story:

Siamese crocodile hatchlings a ‘promising sign’ in Cambodia, but greater protection needed

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