Delaware
Kelsey Schwenk, a 2010 graduate of Schuylkill Haven Area High School and a junior in the honors program at the University of Delaware, spent the winter session in a wildlife study program in Cambodia and Vietnam with a focus on the effects that war had on the wildlife.
Through the university's Institute for Global Studies, she was among 26 students led by two professors to explore Cambodia and Vietnam's lush but hidden ecosystems, indigenous peoples and rich histories.
In Vietnam, Kelsey visited the War Remnants Museum and climbed through the infamous Cu Chi tunnels - a smaller section of the vast and complex network of tunnels once used by Viet Cong guerillas during combat that stretched below much of Vietnam - and trekked up the Mekong River.
In Cambodia, Kelsey spent time in the capital, Phnom Penh, where the group explored the city with students from the Royal University of Phnom Penh.
A portion of the trip was dedicated to learning about the Pol Pot Regime and the Cambodian genocide that took place from 1975 to 1979. Traveling just past the city limits, Kelsey visited the largest war prison, the S-21 Tuel Sleng camp, that has been converted to a museum.
On Jan. 7, 1979, Cambodia was liberated from Khmer Rouge power as a result of the Vietnamese invasion into the country. Nearly 20,000 prisoners had entered S-21 but only seven survivors remained by the time of liberation. Kelsey's group had the privilege of meeting one of the seven survivors, Chum Mey, who shared his story through the help of a translator/tour guide.
Along with S-21, Kelsey visited the Killing Fields, an area where prisoners were eventually executed after questioning in one of many war prisons. It holds mass graves and a five-story tower of skulls in honor of the Cambodian victims.
The major focus of Kelsey's wildlife studies centered around the challenges faced in Southeast Asia, where the black market is causing a decline in wildlife populations of Asian elephants, Asiatic black bears, sun bears and Indochinese tigers. The less fortunate Javan rhinoceros, once prevalent in Asia, has been extirpated due to black market pressures.
Kelsey visited Free the Bears in Cambodia, a wildlife sanctuary created in cooperation with the Cambodian Forest Administration in 1997 for confiscated bears of the illegal wildlife trade. These bears have been rescued from restaurants, where they would have been butchered and served as bear paw soup, from the black market where their gallbladders and other parts may have been used for traditional medicine, from illegal smugglers who planned to sell them as exotic pets and some were freed from snare traps set in the Cardamom forests of Cambodia.
She concluded her trip in the Siem Reap Province of Cambodia, home to the largest Hindu temple complex and religious monument in the world, Angkor Wat.
Kelsey is a daughter of Dale and Kaye Schwenk, Schuylkill Haven.