Birds of the Flooded Forest

Witness some of the rarest birds in Southeast Asia in their pristine natural environment and help secure their future by taking a tour that works in partnership with local communities in floating villages amid semi-submerged forests.
The experience: Osmose specialises in ecotours to the Prek Toal Biosphere, one of the premier bird watching sites in Southeast Asia. Prek Toal is home to breeding colonies of large water birds now extinct elsewhere in the region and is a pristine flooded forest environment. Some of the more accessible birds include lesser and greater adjutants, spot-billed pelicans and milky storks.
These incredible birds have huge wing spans and construct large nests in the trees of the flooded forest.
Osmose offers day trips and overnight tours from Siem Reap to the Prek Toal Biosphere. Osmose has been operating since 1999 and tries to create harmony between the unique environment of the semi-submerged forests, the incredible birdlife, and the local communities that have lived in this area for hundreds of years.
As well as organising birding tours to Prek Toal, Osmose offers canoeing tours of the floating villages which provide unique insights into everyday life on the lake. The Prek Toal Biosphere is about two hours from Siem Reap by a combination of road and boat.
How it helps: Osmose is a non-profit NGO working in conservation, environmental education and sustainable development.
The Osmose ecotourism project offers alternative livelihoods to the local communities through opportunities in guiding, paddling, providing food and accommodation and the sales of water hyacinth handicrafts. Osmose has helped to revitalise water hyacinth weaving to promote handicrafts and this has helped to improve the
lives of many village women. All these jobs and services are linked to the conservation of the environment around Prek Toal. Osmose has turned poachers into gamekeepers and employs more than 25 locals to protect the waterbird colonies.
Osmose is responsible for the environmental education of more than 1,200 children in three floating villages in the Prek Toal-Tonle Sap area.
Subjects include the importance of the forest in the life cycle of the fish on which the community depends for its livelihood, conservation of the forest flora and fauna, and responsible waste management, differentiating organic matter from inorganic.