Forests and forestry

More than a dozen ethnic minority communities from Cambodia’s northeast filed a complaint with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on Monday, accusing it of breaking its own safeguard policies by investing in rubber plantations they say are stealing their land and illegally logging their forests. The ...

Cambodia’s largest hydropower plant to date, the Stung Russey Chrum, is operational. The 338-megawatt dam, located in Koh Kong’s Mondul Sima district forest, produced and transmitted electricity to Phnom Penh last month, according to its developer, China Huadian Corporation. “It is the biggest and best dam we ...

A brigadier general in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) whose home and rubber plantation in Mondolkiri province were raided by police over the weekend said Monday that he was not responsible for the dozens of pieces of illegal luxury wood confiscated during two separate ...

Teng Khorn’s living room is under a tree, his bedroom in a boat hauled up on a slipway for caulking beside the mangroves that lead to his source of income: the sea. His choice of abode is also his act of defiance against the monolithic Chinese ...

In the weeks that 17-year-old garment worker Yon Chea languished in prison, he spent hours staring out of the window at a concrete wall, certain that he would never see his home or his family again. “I never thought I would get out. There was a ...

Some of the hundreds of families losing land and community forest to Vietnamese-owned rubber plantations in Cambodia’s northeast will this week file a complaint with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) over the investment it has made in the plantations’ parent company. Eang Vuthy, executive director of ...

A commune police officer has been summonsed to appear at Ratanakkiri’s provincial court on Friday after 10 villagers filed lawsuits against him in September for his alleged involvement in illegal logging in a community forest and for threatening them with a rifle, villagers and the ...

Among the exotic wildlife that prowls Cambodia’s forests are large furry creatures that may be far more familiar to European and North American visitors than the ever-dwindling populations of large cats and beastly elephants. The Kingdom’s bears climb trees and devour honey just like their ...

The government has granted 322 hectares of state-owned teak forest in the newly formed Tbong Khmum province to the Interior Ministry so that the land can be used to build a new provincial capital, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday. “The government has decided to use more ...

More than 100 families in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district are seeking government intervention against an economic land concessionaire they allege has razed over 1,000 hectares of community forest, village leaders said yesterday. Five representatives for the 144 families departed yesterday to file a complaint at the provincial ...

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 ...

Villagers in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district have filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc, claiming their village chief has threatened them with arrest over a petition accusing officials of illegally logging a community forest. Sven Vev, 40, said he and three other representatives of the ethnic Tumpoun ...

The burning of a bridge that provided access to the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary in Ratanakkiri is the handiwork of two oknhas and local environment officers, villagers have claimed. In a complaint to rights group Adhoc, members of the ethnic Lao community in Kon Mom district say ...

Police and soldiers in Mondulkiri province broke up a gathering of ethnic minority villagers yesterday as they planned to hold prayers and call on the government to stop illegal logging. The ceremony, held in Mondulkiri province‘s Sen Monorom district, was to be attended by an estimated ...

Authorities in Mondolkiri province’s Pech Creada district on Wednesday set up roadblocks to prevent indigenous minority villagers from traveling to Sen Monorom City to attend a demonstration calling for an end to illegal logging, villagers and authorities said. Some 300 indigenous villagers had planned to attend ...

A newly demarcated wildlife and forest protection zone designed to safeguard Cambodia’s national bird, the giant ibis, along with a number of other endangered species, has been approved after more than 10 years in the making. A government sub-decree approving a protection zone spanning 66,932 hectares ...

Ethnic Phnong villagers in Mondulkiri province’s Sen Monorom district will file a complaint with rights group Adhoc today against three men who allegedly illegally logged 10 cubic metres of timber from their forest. ...

Cambodian soldiers are continuing to cut into community forests in Oddar Meanchey province that are meant to anchor what is intended to be the country’s first forest-based carbon credit trading scheme, local villagers and NGOs said Wednesday. ...

More than 200 families filed a complaint with the Preah Vihear provincial court yesterday against two employees of logging tycoon Try Pheap who allegedly cleared 15 hectares of community forest late last year before being stopped by villagers. Huon Kino, 39, a representative of the 203 ...

Four of six men arrested on Thursday for allegedly clearing more than three hectares of protected forest within Mondulkiri’s Seima Biodiversity Conservation Area were charged on Saturday, court officials and rights monitors said yesterday. Sou Sovichea, provincial deputy prosecutor, confirmed yesterday that the four suspects charged ...

Authorities in Kratie and Stung Treng provinces on Thursday said that they were investigating an unusual change of color in the Mekong River to a muddy, dark brown that was unnatural for this time of the year and was worrying residents. Since the beginning of this ...

A Japanese national is being accused by a Preah Sihanouk farmer of shooting him over a logging dispute in Kampong Seila district, the alleged victim and a rights monitor said yesterday. Kanha Phan, 32, is alleging that Peter Ly, 39, shot him in the waist after ...

Villagers living in Mondulkiri’s Sen Monorom district are demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for the loss of thousands of protected resin trees, alleging that a land concessionaire company has been illegally razing community forest since 2012.​ ...

Ten land activists are set to be questioned today by Preah Vihear provincial court over their involvement in halting the drilling of a well in a community forest in November last year, rights monitors said yesterday. Lor Chhan, provincial coordinator for rights group Adhoc, told the Post the ...