Consultancy: Scoping assessment of the wild meat trade in towns and districts around Virachey National Park, Cambodia At Fauna & Flora International

Consultancy: Scoping assessment of the wild meat trade in towns and districts around Virachey National Park, Cambodia

Background
Fauna & Flora is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1903. Our shared purpose is to protect the diversity of life on Earth, for the survival of the planet and its people. We work closely with local conservation partners around the world to save nature, together. We harness this collective expertise to inspire positive change globally.
Fauna & Flora is implementing a seven-year biodiversity conservation landscape project entitled the BLF Lower Mekong (LM) Landscape Project. The project aims to conserve and enhance biodiversity in an area covering more than one million hectares of the Annamite Mountains, and incorporating three large forest complexes in Cambodia, Lao PDR and Vietnam. The programme is funded by the Biodiverse Landscapes Fund (BLF; a UK government grant managed by the Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs – DEFRA) and is being implemented through a consortium of highly experienced international non-governmental organisations, led by Fauna & Flora, and including SNV, and IUCN, working in close collaboration with local partners and Indigenous peoples & local communities (IP&LCs), to ensure activities respond to locally identified and prioritised needs.
The overall impact of the program is to reduce poverty and create sustainable economic development for communities living in, and dependent upon, environmentally critical landscapes. Its’ outputs have been designed using an integrated approach focusing on people, nature, and climate, and are being delivered through six distinct but inter-related components; five of these are output-focused and align to their corresponding output, while the sixth component, MEL and Programme Management, enables delivery of the others through excellent monitoring, evaluation, learning and programme management mechanisms, maintaining a firm focus on future up-scaling across the region.
The project aims to preserve the biodiversity across the focus forest complex, in particular through preventing poaching and reducing illegal wildlife trade. Indeed, one of the pressures on wildlife identified across the project sites is the snaring of ground-dwelling wildlife for trade in high-value part as well as regional and urban meat consumption. Patrols by protected area staff can provide indications of the levels of illegal hunting in the protected areas and household surveys will provide complementary information on hunting in the sites area. However, there are indications that some of the wildlife hunted is sold and consumed in local produce markets and restaurants. This aspect

Purpose and Objectives
To develop targeted and locally appropriate responses to the snaring of wildlife in the national park, we are looking to characterise the scope and organisation of the local trade in wild meat sourced from one of the project sites, Virachey National Park, Cambodia. The consultancy will focus on wild meat trade vendors and intermediaries in the region surrounding the national park and provide information about the trade in wild meat sourced from the park, the species and volumes traded as well as seasonal patterns of trade. The purpose of the consultancy is also to provide new actionable information about local wild meat trade chain and the socio-demographic profile of local vendors and intermediaries, their wild meat sourcing and preparation practices, their motivations, the barriers to reducing their engagement in this trade and finally their perception of their consumers.

Geographic Scope
This assessment will take place in selected villages and towns within a 150km radius of the boundary of Virachey National Park in the provinces of Ratanakiri and Stung Treng. We anticipate Stung Treng town, Siem Pang district, Banlung, Andoung Meas district, Ta Veng districts, Koun Mom town and Ou Porng Man will be key locations.

Scope of Work and Tasks
We are looking for a national consultant with a strong written and spoken technical level of English with proven skills and experience of qualitative data collection and analysis methods to lead on 1. Developing a baseline on the local availability of wild meat following a methodology that can be replicated in subsequent years and at other project sites. 2. A scoping assessment on local wild meat supply chains, characteristics of vendors and their perspective on wild meat consumers’ characteristics using robust qualitative methods.
The consultant would liaise closely with Fauna & Flora Cambodia terrestrial programme in Phnom Penh and Banlung, and UK-based Wildlife Trade Senior Technical Specialist to develop and implement this work including engaging with indigenous communities.

The consultant will:
1) Review unpublished information previously collected by Fauna & Flora and other organisations on hunting and local wild meat trade in the region. – One week
2) Refine research questions and develop methodology for data collection in consultation with Fauna & Flora Cambodia and Wildlife Trade teams – Three weeks allowing for feedback and associated changes
3) Collect data in the field – Three weeks
4) Produce a report outlining methodology and findings – Two weeks

Deliverables
Expected deliverables are:
• One research protocol document including research questions, methodology and data collection plan
• Data collection materials documents e.g. market survey template, questionnaire or interview guide in Khmer and English
• Data set – field notes and participants responses
• Presentation of the result of survey to Fauna & Flora
• One technical report in Khmer and English outlining methodology, findings and conservation recommendations (~20 to 30 pages)
• Training document in Khmer for replication of the wild meat market survey method in subsequent years
Timeframe
We are looking for this work to be completed in two months and before end of March 2025.