Community forest

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries yesterday announced the establishment of two community forest areas over 4,500 hectares in Kampong Thom province’s Santuk district. ...

A newly leaked document attesting to a $15,000 deal between representatives of Ratanakkiri’s Samut Krom village and a timber trader to allow Vietnamese-backed logging in the community’s forest appears to add further weight to its critique. ...

The director of Mondulkiri’s rural development department stands accused of clearing about 50 hectares of state-owned forest for his own farming purposes, authorities said yesterday. ...

An activist in Stung Treng province has been hauled before commune authorities, threatened with a defamation suit and allegedly warned he could be beaten to death for exposing land clearing in his native Thala Borivat district. ...

The story of the Oum Saom forestry community in Kampong Thom province is one that has been told in various forms hundreds of times in Cambodia: local residents locked in a seemingly never-ending battle against a company aiming to cut down their local forest and ...

Authorities in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadav district were thwarted in their attempt to inspect an ethnic Jarai community’s timber stocks on Tuesday, with some officials and observers ascribing the incident to a clash of cultures. ...

Half of a Kuoy ethnic community forest in Stung Treng province – for which villagers are seeking official recognition – has been logged in the past three years for private commercial gain, according to recently returned environmental activist twins Chum Hout and Chum Hour. Seven ...

The Prey Lang Community Network has called on the government to include the protection of the sprawling Prey Lang forest in the remit of the recently established committee to crack down on illegal logging. ...

Steng Treng’s forestry protection communities called on the government and relevant institutions to investigate the irregularities of duty of the local authorities and Stung Treng provincial forestry officers who did not pay attention to local forest conservation, also enable logger to encroach land arbitrarily. ...

A mass eviction in Battambang province yesterday saw 100 locals kicked out of the Prey Tralach community forest, which local authorities claim was illegally inhabited and deforested by villagers. ...

The Prey Lang Community Network, which works to protect Cambodian forests, has been selected by UNDP for an Equator Prize, for outstanding community organizing. In an interview with VOA Khmer, the group’s spokesman, Seng Sok Heng, says the government is “inactive” in protecting Cambodian forests, some ...

Cambodians authorities have cracked down on villagers in three forest communities, arresting them or forcing them to stop clearing land for subsistence agriculture, while companies, military personnel and the government continue to encroach upon the areas, according to commune leaders and rights group officials. ...

Community forest monitors in Preah Vihear province who seized more than 20 chainsaws over the course of a recent weeklong patrol of the Preah Roka forest now plan to ask local officials to join them in publicly setting the confiscated equipment ablaze, according to community ...

Nine forest communities across Cambodia on Friday expressed concern about illegal land encroachment and logging operations as a European Union-funded sustainable forest management project which helped communities in wooded areas thrive comes to an end. ...

As deforestation in Cambodia’s forests has grown in recent years, more and more citizens have come together to fight against it. Now, a group of 300 people are going to campaign for awareness about the destruction of Prey Lang, the largest evergreen forest in the ...

Members of local conservation group the Forest Protection Community announced plans last week to use their own staff members to patrol an area of forest in Anlong Veng that could be decimated by illegal loggers within months. ...

The European Union ambassador on Wednesday called on the Cambodian government to help combat climate change, foremost by reducing red tape for communities who want to form groups to protect what remains of the country’s forests. ...

Activists in Prey Lang forest yesterday seized chainsaws and illegally felled timber from a group of loggers as they continued to “ordain” the woodland’s largest trees in an effort to stop further offences. ...

Villagers in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadav district have filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc against a logging company they say has claimed more than 9,000 hectares of community forest as its own and threatened residents against using the land. ...

A group of university students from Phnom Penh opposed to a proposed hydropower dam in Koh Kong province entered the project’s construction site on Sunday for a 10-day study aiming to highlight the area’s alternative potential for ecotourism. ...

Representatives of communities across the country who have had their lives upturned by development projects yesterday called on the government to rescind the economic land concessions at the centre of their disputes. ...

Representatives of communities across the country who have had their lives upturned by development projects yesterday called on the government to rescind the economic land concessions at the centre of their disputes. ...

Ethnic Tumpoun residents from Ratanakkiri’s Banlung district sent petitions to authorities yesterday to protest plans to erect a Buddha statue at Yeak Loam Lake, saying it will bring bad luck to their villages. ...

Representatives of some 100 families living at the top of a waterfall on the outskirts of Sihanoukville blocked a major highway on Saturday to protest the destruction of their homes and crops by authorities earlier that day, villagers and local officials said Sunday. ...