On May 16th my article and photographs were published in the Australian philanthropic website www.theglobalmail.org. The story, shot in Camdodia’s Cardamom forest tells of a small eco-warrior monk movement that by ordaining trees is trying to slow down the destruction of this protected forest.
You can read the full article here www.theglobalmail.org.
More images I have taken over the years in the Cardamom can be seen on www.lukeduggleby.com
I have just completed my most recent projects and definitely one of the hardest I have ever shot. Not only was it hard emotionally but logistically also. The story is all about Thailand’s illegal dog meat trade. With thousands of miles of porous borders, Thailand is continuously fighting illicit international trade. The border with Laos is over 1700km long and over half of that is the natural boundary of the River Mekong. Most know about the fight against the drug or endangered wildlife trade. But few know that it is fighting another battle against a different type of animal trade – that of domesticated dogs.
Currently NGO’s, local officials and the Thai Mekong River navy, as well as a handful of concerned citizens, are fighting a continuous battle against the illegal dog meat trade. Stolen and bought dogs are collected throughout the country, and brought together in remote areas of Northeast Thailand. Here, deep in forest hideaways, the dogs are stuffed in to metal cages, before being illegally shipped across the Mekong in the middle of the night, to Laos where they make their way overland, sometimes thousands at a time, up to the dog meat restaurants of Northern Vietnam.
In April 2013 alone, almost 2000 dogs were rescued having been caught before shipped to Laos. The culprits often flee the scene or are given lenient fines of a tiny US$30 for trying to smuggle hundreds of dogs. How many dogs get past the officials and across the border per year is unknown but believed to be tens of thousands.
The epicentre of Thailand’s dog meat is a small town called Ta Rae. Home to a large population of Vietnamese Catholics who arrived here during the US war and never returned. Little evidence of the trade can be seen on the streets but it is where the masterminds live, controlling the entire trade. Buying a dog in Thailand can cost as little as US$8 yet are sold in Vietnam for up to US$100, making it an extremely profitable trade and one very hard to stop.
My work follows the trade route from its source, Ta Rae in Sakhon Nakhon Province and the rescued dogs in Nakhon Phanom, across the Mekong in to Laos and finally to the slaughter houses of Hanoi. It is difficult how to deal with this issue. Vietnamese have eaten dogs for thousands of years and don’t have the same connection to them as other nations. To them they are simply animals for consumption as cows or pigs are. But one thing that does need to happen is the improved welfare of the actual dogs themselves and how they are treated. There are dealt with horrendously and if they are still alive by the time they reach Hanoi they are already in very bad condition both physically and psychologically.
I hope this collection of images gives people an insight in to this terrible trade.
A dog slaughter house in Hanoi.
After 700 dogs were rescued in NE Thailand and brought to Nakhon Phanom Dog Shelter, the animals that didn’t make it are removed.
The rescue of 700 dogs having been taken to a dog shelter in Nakhon Phanom, Thailand.
Crammed in to cages and loaded on to a pick-up. These were the lucky ones rescued in NE Thailand.
A dog slaughter house in Hanoi.
A dog meat restaurant in Hanoi.
More images can be seen on www.lukeduggleby.com. All images are copyright Luke Duggleby 2013. All Rights Reserved.
My last trip in to the Cardamom forest in SW Cambodia was both shocking and inspiring. Shocking was the level of deforestation that is occurring throughout the forest. Acre after acre have been burnt to cinders to make way for plantations all because of the new Cambodian Government initiative to give people deeds for their land. This in theory sounds like a good idea and people should have titles to their property, but the haphazard way in which it is being implemented is causing massive destruction to this incredible forest. Local villagers are claiming land for their own in arrangements with village chiefs, cutting down the trees, burning the land, and when the Governments student volunteers (yes, student volunteers!) come to measure the land of each household it is naively included. All this in an area that has seen 3 Chinese dams built and a fourth in the making, destroying vast swathes of pristine forest
There is one glimmer of hope though in the form of a small Buddhist eco-movement that is slowly getting a strong hold in the area. I was fortunate to witness the first tree ordination ceremony where monks and villagers joined together to bless the remaining large trees. By blessing a tree and tying a large piece of orange material around it, it sends a very strong message to a very religious and superstitious people. Would be loggers may be less willing to cut down a tree that has the blessing of the monks. It is still early days and more ceremonies are being planned, but the very same movement was very successful in neighbouring Thailand. The destruction of the Cardamom forest will still continue but hopefully the more trees that the monks can bless the more trees that will remain standing.
Cambodian monks ordain a huge tree that still stands in an area already cleared to make way for a banana plantation. The hope is the large trees, if blessed won’t be cut down.
Cambodian monks ordain a huge tree that still stands in an area already cleared to make way for a banana plantation. The hope is the large trees, if blessed won’t be cut down.
A young girl stands in the clearing of what once was pristine forest.
Cambodian monks ordain a huge tree that still stands in an area already cleared to make way for a banana plantation. The hope is the large trees, if blessed won’t be cut down.
An area of forest being burnt down to make way for a banana plantation.
Eco-warrior monks walk through the smouldering destruction of a cleared forest.
Eco-warrior monks walk through the smouldering destruction of a cleared forest.
An area of forest being burnt down to make way for a banana plantation.
All images copyright Luke Duggleby 2013. All Rights Reserved. No reproductions can me made without Luke’s prior consent.
Fishermen pull up the huge net.
Continuing my ongoing project on Thailand’s fish trawlers I traveled down to the large southern Island of Phuket. Typically associated with mass tourism but Phuket’s fishing industry is huge and every night tens of boats leave the main harbour for the open sea. This time I was accompanied by Beijing based British writer Kit Gillet (www.kitgillet.com) who will be writing a text on this issue. It was not a good night for the captain of our boat with in total only 600kg of small fish. He has just invested US$20,000 in a new Japanese sonar system that reaches up to 600 meters to help him compete with the other boats, without which nowadays he says he wouldn’t have a chance at catching anything. Coming from a family of fishermen, and with his son now learning the ropes, he told us stories of when his grandfather used to fish these waters. Without any form of equipement he would be able to see fish teaming at the surface and return after several hours with thousands of kilos.
Now is very different. The sonar picks up a shoal of fish and all the boats in the vicinity race to catch it. Simply the first one to arrive wins. As we return to the harbour in the morning he points out a his friends boat and says that the best boat in the area catching the most fish. The reason? His sonar reaches 1500 meters!
To see more new pictures and ones from previous trips please visit www.lukeduggleby.com.
Caught in a rain storm, fishermen pull in a net.
Fishermen prepare the equipment as they leave the harbour.
Fishermen rest between work in the pitch black of night.
One last final catch at dawn before returning to the harbour to sell the fish.
Leaving the harbour at dusk fishermen journey out to sea.
All images shown here are copyright Luke Duggleby 2013. All Rights Reserved.
Whilst most people on land sleep the waters of the Gulf of Thailand are teaming with life. Welcome to the life of Thailand’s night trawlers. As the sun sets boats in their thousands leave the shores to trawl the dark waters returning as dawn breaks. Estimates say that Thailand has over 70,000 fishing vessels and despite have a fishing area 20 times less than that of Australia its wild fish production in 2004 was 250 times higher! The industry is enormous and also one under threat.
After years of unrestricted trawling freedom the waters are gradually yielding less of a bounty. When in previous years captains of large trawlers have boasted of 10,000kg catches this year they are lucky to bring home 3000kg and with the price of oil showing no sign of decreasing a good profit is now hard to come by and they must travel further and deeper to make up the quota. This is made worse by legal and illegal trawlers who silently and in complete darkness drop their nets in areas of protected sea (3400m from the shore) that acts as a nursery for fish eggs and newly hatched, to save petrol. Weak laws in place prevent any serious deterrent with fines for trawling in restricted areas a mere 5000 baht (around US$170) and sadly most of what is caught here is sent to be processed as animal feed.
Another issue seriously effecting Thailand’s fishing industry is the plan by the government to ‘legalize’ all ‘illegal’ fishing boats by granting them permits. This could be as high as 20,000 boats. The reason being that the EU says it won’t by any fish from the illegal boats so a short-sighted answer to simply legalize them is the governments way of selling more fish. Not only will this effect fish stocks even more but also the lively hoods of the traditional fishing communities that rely on the sea and have already seen their catchs drop by over 60%.
Many marine ecologists think that the biggest single threat to marine ecosystems today is overfishing. Our appetite for fish is exceeding the oceans’ ecological limits with devastating impacts on marine ecosystems. Scientists are warning that overfishing results in profound changes in our oceans, perhaps changing them forever. Many western countries such as the UK and Canada have already had catastrophic fishing stocks collapse and Thailand is fastly approaching this critical point.
For several years I have been working on this project spending many nights out at sea on trawlers documenting the life and work of the night trawler.
To see more images from this on-going project please visit www.lukeduggleby.com.
All images copyright Luke Duggleby. All Rights Reserved.
At dawn fishermen sort their boats large net out after a night if trawling.
A large catch of good sized fish in the middle of the night.
A squid boat hunts in the darkness.
A Cambodian fishermen helps sort the fishing net in preparation for putting it in the water.
Fishermen unload fish from the boat after a nights of fishing.
The documentary I shot about a remote whale hunting community in Indonesia was published in Holland’s De Volkskrant newspaper. This tiny community for centuries has hunted whales and sharks with spears. The meat of which is then eaten or exchanged for commodities such as rice from the islands interior. Only catching a small number of whales per year they are allowed under international law as ‘aboriginal whaling’.
The Last Whale Hunters of Indonesia in De Volkskrant newspaper – August 2012
At the end of November I returned to the Cardamom Mountains of Western Cambodia with long-term Cambodian resident Alejandro Gonzalez Davidson. Over the years I have been documenting the many issues that SE Asia’s largest forest is subject to but usually through the eyes of NGO’s and the rangers they employ to stop illegal poaching or logging. This time however was a chance to spend time with an indigenous community who for centuries has lived in the Cardamom and utilised the many resources from the forest in a sustainable way. For this trip we visited a very remote and beautiful valley called Areng. Connected only by one dirt track that takes even the most experienced motobike rider 3 hours to cover 16km in the raint season, it is a valley relatively untouched by modern influence. There is no electricity or running water and the local people still live the way they have for generations. This valley has grasslands that can’t be seen anywhere else in Cambodia! Its awesome!
Unfortunately it is also at risk with a Chinese electricity company is wanting to build a dam here, a large and inefficient dam, that will flood the entire valley, cause the relocation of thousands of villagers and destroy a truly stunning wilderness. Now only will the local people be relocated to a hill-top area on the path of the elephant corridor they will be given no land to cultivate rice. It is a nervous time for them and whilst there we met a group of Chinese engineers who are assessing the profitability of the dam.
Not only are the villagers at risk though but this is one of the last natural habitats of the Siamese crocodile, an animal previously thought to be extinct in the wild. And in deed they are there as we saw with our own eyes, one swimming across the river before being startled by our presence and diving in to the water. Such a delicate animal will unlikely be re-located with success so if the dam is built again the Siamese crocodile might return to the extinct in the wild list.
But there is hope. A small Cambodian NGO is visiting the local people giving them advice on how to proceed in successfully opposing the dam and hopefully with the use of these photographs they will be able to show people what a great loss it will be to loose the Areng Valley.
Local indigenous inhabitants of the Areng Valley in the Southern Cardamom build a new house.
Chinese engineers will spend 3 months in the Areng Valley, part of the Southern Cardamom, assessing the
feasibility of a haydro-electric dam that will destroy this remote valley.
Local indigenous inhabitants of the Areng Valley in the Southern Cardamom sort rice.
Local indigenous inhabitants of the Areng Valley in the Southern Cardamom build a new house.
Local indigenous inhabitants of the Areng Valley in the Southern Cardamom walk through the grasslands.
To see more images from the Cardamom Mountains please visit www.lukeduggleby.com.
Eight Magazine, Bulgaria’s most popular scientific and educational magazine featured me and my work in this months issue.
In the November issue of World Magazine, a US Christian magazine, my image shot in Northern Ethiopia. It shows pre-dawn worshippers gathering for prayer outside St. Gabriel’s Church in Hawzen, nestled in the rocky, mountainous province of Tigray, which borders Eritrea. Dotting the region are ancient churches carved into sandstone cliffs that safeguard ancient religious manuscripts.
In September 2012 I visited Myanmar’s largest city Yangon and shot this Special Destination feature for Korean Air’s Morning Calm Magazine.
More images from my days of wandering around Yangon can be seen on www.lukeduggleby.com.
