Cambodia is a post-conflict country, reborn after years of war and clashes which have terribly wounded people and destroyed infrastructure and institutions.
Though the country has openned to market economy, its population still lives in a very precarious situation: GNP is $356 per capita (200th of world's rank), 82% of the population is rural and is concentrated mainly in the rice-growing areas bordering the Mekong River.
The rest of the country is covered up to 61% of intact tropical forests, where survives an extremely poor and scattered population.

In the North-Eastern highland reliefs, the primary forests area is inhabited by even more underprivileged minorities of mountaineers.
Practicing a rational hunting and gathering, they started to jeopardize the resources of their forest only ten years ago, when they began to answer to traffickers' demand of wild animals to feed the illicit market of traditional Chinese medicine, for which each part of the body of wild animals - particularly that of tiger - has a very high commercial value.

Illicit networks have been able to proliferate because the population is unaware of the scarcity of the species they are living with, therefore they are not considered as a patrimonial treasure. The diversity of wildlife is seen as trivial, primitive and not threatened. But some have recently become aware of the threat to their environment and lifestyles. They express a request for assistance to improve their daily lives and their future. POH KAO believes that only those communities who live closest to the wildlife are the guarantors and actors in its preservation. They must be able to flourish economically and socially.