Forests and forestry
Forest cover
Ministry vows to take some ELC land back
Amid promises reiterated by the government yesterday that it will take a tougher stance on economic land concessions, logging tycoon Try Pheap minimally reduced his sweeping natural resource empire, returning more than 20,000 hectares of undeveloped forestry. It was unclear what kind of arrangement prompted Pheap ...
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/ministry-vows-take-some-elc-land-back
Companies regrow ‘forests’
More than 100,000 hectares of forest have been replanted across the country since 2008, according to a government report – but about 90 per cent of that amount can be chalked up to private plantations. Produced by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the report, ...
May Titthara
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/companies-regrow-%E2%80%98forests%E2%80%99
EU gives park protection
A huge area of Ratanakkiri province’s Virachey National Park has been declared a protected area under a European Union-funded plan that government officials say will shift forest communities away from dependence on depleted forest byproducts. Chhay Samith, head of protected natural areas at the Ministry of ...
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/eu-gives-park-protection
Cities, provinces ordered to report on illegal logging, fishing
In yet another attempt to stem the looting of Cambodia’s forests, lakes and rivers, the Interior Ministry has given all cities and provinces until July 20 to submit detailed reports on all the illegal logging and fishing taking place in their jurisdictions. The latest initiative comes ...
Bunong vow to act against Mondolkiri loggers
Ethnic Bunong in Mondolkiri province’s Sen Monorom City said Tuesday that they would no longer cooperate with local officials in fighting illegal logging and that they would begin to confiscate loggers’ equipment and burn illicit timber themselves. At a press conference in Phnom Penh, representatives of ...
Sek Odom
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/bunong-vow-to-act-against-mondolkiri-loggers-62960/
Living on a dwindling trade
In Samrong Leu village, a picturesque community nestled deep in the verdant fields of Kors Kralor district, the acrid smell of smoke fills the air. Outside almost every house in this community, billows of smoke continuously emerge from the domes of homemade mud kilns, drifting around ...
Kevin Ponniah and Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/living-dwindling-trade
Back on timber patrol
When Cambodia’s most prominent forest activist, Chut Wutty, was gunned down in April 2012, the community network he created to sabotage the rampant deforestation of this vast forest fragmented. The forest patrols that he organised nearly ground to a halt. Without money to fund large-scale expeditions, ...
May Titthara and Daniel Pye
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/back-timber-patrol
Cambodian Villagers Express Helplessness to Protect Forest
Prey Lang is one of Cambodia’s few remaining large forests, covering approximately 3,600 square kilometers across four northern provinces. The forest is home to about 200,000 mostly indigenous people, who depend on it for their livelihoods, according to the Prey Lang Community Network. But, the ...
Say Mony
http://www.voanews.com/content/illegal-logging-in-cambodian-forest-worries-natives/1928013.html
Military cop investigated for alleged forest clearing
A deputy district military police chief in Kampong Thom’s Santuk district is under scrutiny for allegedly clearing up to seven hectares of community forest land for personal gain, and district officials are investigating the case with the aim of presenting it at the provincial court ...
Chhay Channyda
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/military-cop-investigated-alleged-forest-clearing
A logging free-for-all
The scale of mass logging in once-dense woodlands in Cambodia’s north now more closely resembles the free-for-all of a gold rush than the sustainable forestry more often associated with these communities. With the financial backing of powerful businessmen, villagers in three districts of Preah Vihear are ...
May Titthara
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/logging-free-all
Big logging cartel alleged
Prime Minister Hun Sen’s brother Hun Neng and a Vietnamese state-owned rubber firm are involved in an illegal logging cartel involving several well-connected companies operating on a “massive scale” in the embattled Prey Lang forest, forest monitors working in the area allege. Video footage and photographs ...
May Titthara and Daniel Pye
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/big-logging-cartel-alleged
Firm ‘logging in sanctuary’
A company in Mondulkiri’s Sok San commune has been gradually cutting down a community forest, pushing more than 100 families off their land, villagers said yesterday. “That land belongs to us, the government granted it to us in 1999. But the company invaded and let us ...
May Titthara
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/firm-%E2%80%98logging-sanctuary%E2%80%99
Patrol detains loggers
A forest patrol in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district spotted five loggers clearing the community’s ancestral forest on Tuesday, villagers and rights group Adhoc said yesterday. Adhoc provincial coordinator Chhay Thy said that three representatives of nearly 200 ethnic Jarai families in Pak Nhai commune asked for help ...
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/patrol-detains-loggers
District forestry boss charged over ‘logging’
The director of the Lumphat district forestry department in Ratanakkiri province was charged and put in pre-trial detention on Monday for allegedly logging on protected land around Ou’Sinlair waterfall, police and court officials revealed yesterday. Deputy Police Chief Klol Thoeun said that Meung Bunthin was picked ...
Khouth Sophak Chakrya
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/district-forestry-boss-charged-over-%E2%80%98logging%E2%80%99
Kuoy villagers say patrols put logging on pause
For three days last week, the Preah Roka forest in Preah Vihear province was silent, the usual cacophony of chainsaws notably absent. The buzz of trucks arriving empty and later leaving heavily loaded with timber had been replaced by ethnic Kuoy villagers, about 300 in all, ...
May Titthara
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/kuoy-villagers-say-patrols-put-logging-pause
Forest almost gone: Adhoc
About 200 families from Mondulkiri’s Keo Seima district filed a complaint on Sunday against a Vietnamese-owned company alleged to have razed more than 3,500 hectares of community forest since 2010, villagers and a rights group said yesterday. A rubber concessionaire identified as Sovan Reachsey has been ...
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/forest-almost-gone-adhoc
Reforestry Claim ‘A Stretch’
The government reforested 80,693 hectares of land between 2008 and 2012 as part of its efforts to combat deforestation, a recent agriculture ministry report says, but these seemingly impressive statistics were reached by counting rubber trees and other agricultural crops as adequate replacements for forests. The ...
May Titthara and Kevin Ponniah
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/reforestry-claim-%E2%80%98-stretch%E2%80%99
Memories of a land unspoiled
The constant hum of chainsaws almost drowned out Buddhist monk Sam Kim Sath, 65, as he stood this week in a wildlife sanctuary on Oral Mountain, Cambodia’s highest peak. Forest in the Phnom Oral Wildlife Sanctuary, in the eastern part of the Cardamoms, is being “obliterated” ...
May Titthara
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/memories-land-unspoiled
Government Drops Challenge to Official Forest Cover Figure
The Forestry Administration on Thursday said it could not comment on the accuracy of new, satellite-generated maps that suggest the government has been vastly overstating the country’s forest cover. Open Development Cambodia, an open data website, on Wednesday published a series of maps using U.S. satellite ...
Zsombor Peter
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/government-drops-challenge-to-official-forest-cover-figure-49264/
Cambodia Opposition Leader Urges Halt to Forest Land Concessions
Cambodia’s opposition leader called Wednesday for a halt to land concessions granted by the government to foreign companies in the country’s vast Prey Lang Forest, calling for greater protection of one of Southeast Asia’s last remaining lowland evergreen woodlands. Cambodia National Rescue Party President Sam ...
Radio Free Asia News Staff
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/prey-lang-12112013181039.html
Can’t see the forest …
The percentage of Cambodia covered in forest has fallen from about 72 per cent in 1973 to only about 46 per cent in 2013, satellite image data released yesterday shows. A series of animated maps that Open Development Cambodia (ODC) produced from NASA satellite images detail ...
Shane Worrell
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/can%E2%80%99t-see-forest-%E2%80%A6
Official blames villagers for deforestation
Government officials yesterday laid the blame for Cambodia’s deforestation on villagers gathering firewood. “Every day, they need fuel for cooking – that’s a lot of logging,” Chheng Kimsun, director general of the Forestry Administration, said at a workshop aimed at addressing sustainable forest management. Gathered at the ...
Phak Seangly and Laignee Barron
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/official-blames-villagers-deforestation
Local Groups Say They Must Protect Forest, as Government Fails
Local watchdog groups say they have been forced to take forest protection into their hands, due to a failure of government to do so. “As we have seen: the National Assembly, the Senate and the government do not work,” Ouch Leng, head of the Cambodian Human ...
Sok Khemara
http://www.voacambodia.com/content/local-grouos-say-they-must-protect-forest-as-government-fails/1800429.html
Ex-Environment Minister Says Deforestation Exaggerated
Former Environment Minister Mok Mareth on Tuesday accused the media of having “twisted the truth” in reporting on illegal logging in Ratanakkiri province, where rights groups and independent forestry monitors say the natural environment is being pillaged and ethnic minority communities impoverished by illegal loggers ...
Ben Woods and Aun Pheap
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/ex-environment-minister-says-deforestation-exaggerated-47930/