Protected areas

The government said this week it wanted to increase by at least 30 percent the number of forest rangers working next year in Cambodia’s wildlife sanctuaries, national parks and other protected areas to guard against encroaching logging, poaching and farming. ...

A letter sent to authorities in Siem Reap province on Monday by nine park rangers accusing two senior environment officials of involvement in illegally cutting down six trees for profit was dismissed as a lie by one of the accused yesterday, who instead insisted it ...

To celebrate World Elephant Day today, the conservation group Wildlife Alliance (WA) celebrated its achievement of zero poaching of the Cardamom Rainforest’s Asian elephant population in the last decade, according to a press release on Wednesday. ...

Cambodia’s first large-scale private-sector sale of carbon credits was finalised yesterday, with conservationists predicting that it could pave the way for more public-private partnerships, making millions of dollars of funding available for local carbon-based initiatives. US entertainment giant Walt Disney Company has officially purchased $2.6 ...

Interior Minister Sar Kheng informed European Ambassador George Edgar on Tuesday that plans to construct a controversial road and border checkpoint that would have cut straight through the Mondolkiri Protected Forest had been suspended. ...

The environmental protection group WWF has criticized the penalty imposed on three brothers arrested in Mondolkiri province over the weekend for filling the trunk of a car with turtles, lizards, snakes, a monkey and a civet—all of them meant to be food for a party. ...

Rangers from the Sre Pok Wildlife Sanctuary in Mondulkiri province intercepted two men and a minor allegedly smuggling more than 50 wild animals on Saturday evening, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Koh Nhek district police. ...

An endangered Asian elephant died in eastern Cambodia after sustaining a severe foot wound caused by a snare trap, officials said on Monday. ...

World Wildlife Fund for Cambodia and the Ministry of Environment launched a glossy, 76-page picture booklet about the Phnom Prich Wildlife Sanctuary in Mondulkiri province yesterday, with the goal of educating the public about the benefits of protecting wildlife and countering poaching.   ...

A second pair of endangered pileated gibbons released into the forest near Angkor Wat last year have had a baby. ...

Two rare gaurs, a mother and calf, have died after being found trapped in a snare in the Cardamom Mountains’ Samlot Protected Area, according to the sanctuary’s chief and an official from the Maddox Jolie-Pitt (MJP) Foundation, a wildlife NGO founded by Angelina Jolie. ...

Continued widespread logging in the Prey Lang forest is evidence that the government’s recent push to have more than 400,000 hectares of land protected is toothless, according to activists as well as a Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN) report released yesterday. ...

Researchers have released new photos offering a rare glimpse of endangered elephant herds seen traveling with calves through the Tonle Srepok Wildlife Sanctuary in Mondulkiri province earlier this month. The photos are part of a conservation supervisory project undertaken by Winrock International and the World Wildlife ...

Cambodia’s population of spotted Indochinese leopards will be extinct by 2018 unless action is taken to deal with the “snaring crisis” in Mondolkiri province, where the few remaining leopards live, according to the author of a forthcoming paper on the issue.   ...

The government has reversed course on a controversial decision to downsize the proposed boundaries of a long-awaited protected area for the beleaguered Prey Lang Forest, the largest lowland evergreen forest left in Southeast Asia.   ...

Minister of Environment Say Sam Al has sent a letter to the Minister of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction asking to register nearly six million  hectares of land as protected under the Ministry of the Environment.    ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has signed a sub-decree to mark 18 protected areas over nearly three million hectares of land across Prey Lang forest, according to a Ministry of Environment statement released yesterday. ...

Before it takes action on ‘relocating’ Indian tigers, Cambodia’s forestry administration is on a special mission – scouting for signs of indigenous tigers in its dense jungles, where according to reports they are “functionally extinct”.   ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday told Cambodians to stop hunting and poisoning wild birds, whose populations are already under strain from drought and forest fires.   ...

A landmark decision by Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen could see almost a million hectares of forest reclassified as protected areas in a country with one of the highest deforestation rates in the world.​ But the order, circulated on Friday, to transfer control of the sites ...

The core of one of Cambodia’s most important and abused forests —Prey Lang—was officially de­clared a protected area this week af­ter years of campaigning by local ac­tivists and foreign conservationists.    ...

The Angkor Elephant Company has pledged to reduce the working hours of its animals following the death last Friday of Sambo, one of 14 elephants it uses to carry tourists around the Angkor Wat temple complex, although critics say anything short of their release from ...

The Apsara Authority announced yesterday that it is considering the selective removal of some trees inside the 401-square-kilometer Angkor Park, saying that only those that pose potential risk to the park’s visitors and temples would be cut down. ...

The Ministry of Environment conducted a workshop yesterday to discuss the government’s plan to designate five forest areas, totaling about one million hectares of land, as protected. ...