Environment and natural resources

Preah Vihear officials abruptly barred environmental activists from holding a planned public forum Wednesday, with the activists claiming it was for political reasons and officials saying the group had failed to go through the proper channels. Seng Sokheng, secretariat coordinator of Community Peace Building Network, said ...

US credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has ranked Cambodia’s economy and creditworthiness as the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Of 116 nations measured by S&P as part of a vulnerability index published last month – with a number 1 ranking being the ...

A team of international researchers have discovered a unique species of wolf snake in South East Asia. Some magnificent creatures still lay hidden in Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains, waiting to be found, analysed and categorised by researchers working in the area. Since 2000 scientists working for Fauna and ...

A Battambang bridge project isn’t to blame for blocking a river and preventing water from reaching parched rice fields, an Asian Development Bank investigation concluded yesterday. Bavel district farmers accused the bank-funded construction project of choking the river since construction began in December, leaving their recently ...

Mondulkiri provincial police charged four men with illegal logging and immigration crimes after they allegedly caught the suspects collecting wood in O’Raing district. Vietnamese nationals Orng Minh Chhung, 30; Le Vantieng, 38; Tvan Taktech, 33; and Thvang Vanthai, 36, were arrested while gathering freshly cut pieces ...

A Sihanoukville construction project isn’t pulling out all the stops so much as plugging all the drains, leaving neighbouring residents to stew in murky floodwaters, villagers say. Last month, while levelling out the 20-hectare plot, construction workers dumped dirt in front of two large drainage pipes, ...

Chroy Changva district governor Klaing Huot, who was one of six Phnom Penh district governors to take up a post Monday, vowed to tackle rampant sand-dredging in the Mekong River during his appointing ceremony. Mr. Huot, who moved from his post as Russei Keo district governor ...

A construction worker was struck dead and six others were injured on Sunday in Oddar Meanchey’s Anglong Veng district, marking the second death by lightning in the area in the past three months, a commune police chief said. ...

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, ...

The Cambodian Ministry of Environment and the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Monday signed a five-year cooperation agreement with an aim to reduce climate impacts on agriculture, according to a joint statement. The agreement was inked jointly by Cambodian Minister of Environment Say ...

A 21-year-old Cambodian man was allegedly shot by Thai soldiers on Thursday after crossing the border to illegally log rosewood, officials in Oddar Meanchey province said yesterday. Nhan Sarom, O’Smach deputy commune chief, told the Post> that border soldiers opened fire on a group of more than ...

As the sun rises on Tonle Sap Lake, fishermen head out from floating villages like this one, past half-submerged mangroves and flooded shrub land, to check their nets, much as they have for centuries. Every year, the lake yields about 300,000 tons of fish, making it ...

Fishermen who have lived off the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh’s Russey Keo district for generations were forced upstream recently after hundreds of dead fish mysteriously appeared in local waters. The 29 families who live on houseboats from which they cast their traps started moving ...

Sambo the elephant will not be allowed to return to work in Phnom Penh, because both City Hall and the Forestry Administration oppose the idea, the FA’s director-general said yesterday. The 54-year-old Sambo left the city in 2012 after decades of entertaining and giving rides to ...

The Ministry of Water Resources seized four boats on Wednesday for allegedly breaking a government ban on river sand dredging in Phnom Penh and is searching for the owners. The city issued the ban last year in response to what it said was an oversupply of ...

Cambodia Ministry of Tourism hopes to encourage international tourists to visit coastal areas and ecotourism destinations to take pressure off Siem Reap. The ministry’s marketing & promotion department representative, Hou Sokhom, told TTR Weekly that the country needs to encourage tourists to travel more to other ...

Filthy trucks loaded with luxury timber rule the red-earth roads in this heavily deforested district. Each day, dozens of 10-wheelers bounce along the pot-holed roads, carting logs of the much-sought Thnong timber. And while some of the cargo is legal, much of it is not. ...

After blocking a river for months, a construction project’s recently installed water pipes are delivering relief to only some of Battambang’s drought-stricken fields. More than 400 farmers in Bavel district blamed the Asian Development Bank-funded bridge for choking the river since construction began in December, leaving ...

Four Cambodian nationals who had been incarcerated in Thailand for logging and illegally crossing the border were released on Monday after completing their prison terms, officials said yesterday. Touch Ra, deputy director of the Chaom-Sa Ngaom international border checkpoint in Oddar Meanchey province, said two of ...

A British conservation group says its hidden cameras have taken photos of a wild cattle species in an area in Siem Reap province where it was previously thought to be extinct. In a statement released Wednesday, Fauna and Flora International said the cameras recorded six individual ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Thursday that environmental protection is the most important measure to ensure the sustainable development of economy and society. In his message on the 42nd International Environment Day that falls on June 5, Hun Sen said the government is committed to ...

Some 400 students, monks and activists were stopped from a peaceful march for Environmental Day on Thursday, as they sought to deliver petitions to the Ministry of Environment and other institutions calling for an end to deforestation. Cambodia’s forests provide many services to the rural poor, ...

A youth group plans to march in support of World Environment Day today, despite being told not to by municipal authorities. ...

Police in Kompong Thom province Wednesday arrested seven people allegedly involved in an illegal checkpoint racket, while an eighth escaped with handcuffs on and is at large. Shortly before 7 a.m., a joint task force of police and military police descended on an illegal checkpoint staffed ...