Environment and natural resources

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 ...

A series of high-flying creatures, including giant flying frogs and squirrels and a parachute gecko, are among the hundreds of exotic new species recently discovered in the greater Mekong region in southeast Asia. A new eyeless spider and a fish that mates head-to-head are also highlighted ...

Laos will push ahead with its ambition to become the “battery of Southeast Asia,” planning a Mekong River dam that has drawn opposition from neighbors and threatens to involve China and the U.S. Four Mekong River nations are scheduled to meet June 26-27 in Thailand to ...

The government of New Zealand on Wednesday signed up to provide Cambodia with 3.7 million U.S. dollars for the preservation and protection of Angkor Wat Temple, one of the world heritage sites, said a news statement from the Cambodian government. Bun Narith, director general of Apsara ...

The Ministry of Water and Meteorology has warned farmers of a rainfall shortage forecast to last at least another month, with average daily temperatures also forecast to remain above average. The announcement, issued on Monday, says that up until mid-July Phnom Penh, Kandal, Kampong Speu, Takeo, ...

A journalist has filed a complaint with the Pursat provincial court alleging that a soldier threatened to kill him on Sunday after he wrote a series of damning articles linking the soldier to illegal rosewood trafficking, court officials confirmed Tuesday. Both the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces ...

Member of Phnom Penh’s lake communities who stand to have their lives uprooted by development projects filed complaints yesterday. Representatives of 260 families who live near Boeung Tamok in Sen Sok district’s Ponhea Pon commune filed a petition with City Hall asking for intervention over 200 ...

Indigenous villagers in Mondolkiri province say relevant authorities that are supposed to crack down on forestry crimes instead collude with logging companies and powerful businessmen, allowing them cut down trees. That has put their forest tribal traditions and livelihoods, which are dependent on forests, in ...

With barely a drop of rain falling on their parched fields, Battambang farmers are pleading with a construction company to stop blockading the local river so their recently planted crops don’t dry out. The Asian Development Bank-funded bridge connecting Battambang and Banteay Meanchey has blocked the ...

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 ...

Members of the Kuoy ethnic group captured two loggers and seized two chainsaws on Saturday, accusing the alleged loggers of felling resin trees illegally at Prey Preah Rokar community forest in Preah Vihear. ...

SIEM PANG DISTRICT, Stung Treng province – For the elite few granted the right to level swathes of woodland in the north of this remote province, the timber trade is worth a fortune. For the Forestry Administration—the government body charged with policing logging—business is also booming. While ...

Since he began making the perilous journey to Thailand to log rosewood 10 years ago, Sao Sophon* has had plenty of time to calculate the cost of dying. “When we cross the border to Thailand, our lives are equal to $80 or $90, because that is ...