Society for Marine Mammalogy

We received a response to our letter regarding Irrawaddy dolphins in the Mekong River of Cambodia:

Dr. Randall Wells
President
The Society for Marine Mammalogy

Dear Dr. Randall Wells,

Thank you very much for your support letter to our commitment in Kratie Declaration on the Conservation of the Mekong River dolphins dated on 21 Fbruary, 2012 representing of 1,963 scientists and student members of the Society for Marine Mammalogy. On behalf of all the member of the Commission for Conservation and Development of the Mekong River Dolphin Eco-tourism Zone, the river guards and local communities living along side of the dolphin habitat, I would like to pay my compliment to you and your effort to help improve our partnership for conservation the endangered Mekong River dolphin species through the valuable recommendation on the last day of the critical Kratie workshop. As committed to the Declaration and Recommendation of the Workshop, the Commission, WWF and the FiA had started to implement the activities recommended one by one. As such one qualified veterinarian was already recreated to do field work with Garry and other Cambodian scientists and the remote biopsy sampling is under the process for obtaining the government permission. The latter one is expected to get approval from the government soon. On the other hand, the draft of the a sub-decree on the establishment of the dolphin conservation zone was successfully passed the final debate before submitting to the Council of Minister Meeting on Friday 23, March 2012. Hope it will be alright.

Once again I would to thank you for your support to three organizations that work on the same goal for sustaining ths endangered species.

Hope to meet you again during the next workshop.

Yours sincerely,

Touch Seang Tana