Environmental and biodiversity protection

Cambodia’s opposition leader called Wednesday for a halt to land concessions granted by the government to foreign companies in the country’s vast Prey Lang Forest, calling for greater protection of one of Southeast Asia’s last remaining lowland evergreen woodlands. Cambodia National Rescue Party President Sam ...

LUMPHAT WILDLIFE SANCTUARY, Ratanakkiri Province – From behind the corrugated metal walls of Daun Penh Agrico’s wood depot, the raspy buzz of a chainsaw rattled through the surrounding forest on Monday afternoon. As the chainsaw revved and cut, a heavy-duty truck packed full of long, sawn ...

A pair of endangered pileated gibbons will be released today into the forest in the Angkor Archaeological Park, the beginning of a project that could see the resettlement of many other animals that had been extirpated from the area, wildlife experts said. “We are hoping that ...

Communities threatened by the planned construction of three hydropower dams in Stung Treng and Ratanakkiri provinces will today submit to the Chinese Embassy a petition demanding that the embassy intervene against Chinese companies investing in the dams. The petition, to be presented in Chinese, Khmer and ...

The percentage of Cambodia covered in forest has fallen from about 72 per cent in 1973 to only about 46 per cent in 2013, satellite image data released yesterday shows. A series of animated maps that Open Development Cambodia (ODC) produced from NASA satellite images detail ...

Air pollution from vehicles and electric generators inside the Angkor Archeological Park and in Siem Reap City is soiling and darkening the monuments at the World Heritage Site, an official at the Apsara Authority, which is responsible for the park, said Friday. Options to decrease ...

About 300 cubic metres of luxury timber is being felled every day and transported on boats to Vietnam and Thailand from four districts in Koh Kong province, according to an investigation by a local rights group. Chea Hean, director of the Natural Resource and Wildlife Preservation ...

Villagers in Mondolkiri province filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc on Friday, saying that they had discovered loggers illegally felling trees in their local community forest who claimed to be working for businessman Try Pheap. Mr. Pheap, who owns plantations, mining concessions and special economic ...

Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand have all called on Laos to submit its planned Don Sahong hydropower dam to an intergovernmental assessment. According to the dam’s opponents, the Laos National Mekong Committee has acted unilaterally in the planning of its second Mekong dam, a project they fear ...

Cambodia’s Apsara National Authority, which manages Angkor Archaeological Park, will this week unveil a “revolutionary” new concept for Angkor’s management that will vastly decentralize responsibility for the preservation of the temple complex, according to Anne Lemaistre, Unesco representative in Cambodia. The new Angkor Heritage Management Framework, ...

Local watchdog groups say they have been forced to take forest protection into their hands, due to a failure of government to do so. “As we have seen: the National Assembly, the Senate and the government do not work,” Ouch Leng, head of the Cambodian Human ...

A district-level Environment Ministry official on Thursday retracted comments he made last week when he claimed proper monitoring of logging inside Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary was impossible because his ministry did not know the boundaries of private land concessions in the protected zone. On November ...

Now about six months old, Hope is still a little clumsy when climbing trees. Hope’s sidekick, named “173,” follows her around as if they were inseparable twins. Together, they swing in a hammock, bathe in a pool and, sometimes, climb up the metal bars of their ...

Ethnic Jarai villagers in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district have accused border officials of not only allowing illegal Vietnamese loggers to cross the border unimpeded, but also of taking their side in negotiations with a community forest patrol. Members of the patrol in Paknhai commune’s Lam village said ...

A private agro-industrial company has come under fire from villagers in Ratanakkiri province who say it has illegally felled resin-producing trees that are their main source of income. More than 1,000 trees in the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district are under threat, the villagers ...

Former Environment Minister Mok Mareth on Tuesday accused the media of having “twisted the truth” in reporting on illegal logging in Ratanakkiri province, where rights groups and independent forestry monitors say the natural environment is being pillaged and ethnic minority communities impoverished by illegal loggers ...

The rights group Adhoc says it is monitoring “at least 100” individuals who are complicit in forestry crimes across the country. These include “high-ranking officers” of the police and military police; business tycoons; and ordinary citizens across 11 provinces, Chan Soveth, a lead investigator for the ...

Local communities that lost their land via economic land concessions to private companies are now being paid by those same firms to illegally fell the trees that once sustained their livelihoods, a group of five advocacy groups contended yesterday. At a press conference, the NGOs singled ...

Forest land in Asia-Pacific countries has grown overall since 2002, according to a study released last week, but Cambodia was one of only three countries surveyed to buck the trend. Out of 14 countries included in the study by the Regional Community Forestry Training Center (RECOFTC), ...

Like most millennium-old structures discovered in the forests of Cambodia, the locals had known all along about this one. Jarai minority villagers in this remote spot in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district not only knew about it, but they revered the red-brick temple, using it as a ...

A month after a company owned by tycoon Kith Meng was ordered to suspend logging the reservoir area of the controversial Lower Sesan II dam, the government yesterday threatened legal action against it if its orders aren’t followed. In a letter obtained by the Post yesterday, the Council ...

The Ministry of Environment on Thursday denied that a private agro-industry firm had been issued an “unofficial” land concession inside Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, as stated on Monday by the provincial governor. In response to claims by local officials that Daun Penh Agrico Co. Ltd. ...

A district-level Environment Ministry official in Ratanakkiri province on Wednesday claimed that he had no way to determine the legality of logging operations by firms with private land concessions inside the province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary. The claim by Chou Sopheak, director of Lumphat district’s environment department, ...

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has released a nine-month status report on 2013’s illegal timber seizures, saying it had confiscated, among other things, more than 2,000 kilograms of rosewood – a figure that represents only a tiny fraction of seizures reported by the Post this ...