Forests and forestry

A pile of illegally logged wood discovered by police in Ratanakkiri province earlier this month along a road built by a local rubber plantation often accused of illegal logging has since gone missing, a Forestry Administration official said on Sunday.   ...

Cambodia has one of the world’s highest deforestation rates. But a group of Buddhist monks are stepping up efforts to save forests by publicly revealing wrongdoings and mobilizing local villagers. Ate Hoekstra reports. ...

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. ...

Kratie Forestry Administration forces in cooperation with provincial armed forces seized 12 trucks laden with illegal timber yesterday.   ...

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 ...

The government claims not to have issued a single permit to export Siamese rosewood since it agreed to strict new trade rules for the exceedingly rare trees, and says it will look into a U.N.-managed database that states otherwise.   ...

The government has indefinitely postponed what was intended to be the first of several public auctions to sell off 71,000 cubic meters of timber seized by au­thorities since January, according to officials, who cited a lack of interest among potential buyers. ...

Cambodia exported hundreds of millions of dollars worth of threatened Siamese rosewood in the 18 months after ratifying a 2013 international protocol designed to protect the species from destructive trade, according to a report released on Friday.   ...

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Monday called for the closure of 2.25 million hectares of natural forest in the country’s Central Highlands as well as the shuttering of wood processing facilities across the country, regional news outlets reported. ...

The government has set the dates to auction off the last of the 71,000 cubic meters of illegally logged timber seized by authorities this year, carrying on a practice riddled with signs of corruption in the past.   ...

While the luxury timber trade continues to eat away at Cambodia’s forests, there is another industry that poses a growing threat to the Kingdom’s trees: pepper farms.   ...

Three military trucks were caught transporting illegally logged rosewood by Tbong Khmum authorities yesterday, according to the National Police website. ...

Kampot’s Ta Reach bridge was severely damaged by a truck overloaded with illegal luxury timber over the weekend, prompting a manhunt for the truck’s driver, who was apparently on his way to Vietnam at the time of the accident. ...

As the government prepares to start auctioning off the 70,000 cubic meters of illegal timber it has seized so far this year, not one of the companies on whose property it was found—nor anyone else—has been charged over the wood, following months of court procedures. ...

A local newspaper publisher has appealed directly to Prime Minister Hun Sen for help after provincial officials allegedly crashed into his car and threatened him in order to hide timber smuggling activities. ...

The Mondulkiri Provincial Court yesterday released on bail three ethnic Phnong villagers charged with illegally clearing state land on the condition that they agree not to return to their homes and farms. ...

The Ministry of Economy and Finance has announced the date of the auction for timber confiscated from logging companies by the National Anti-Deforestation Committee (NADC) earlier this year, inadvertently releasing the official names of seven previously unknown companies caught housing illegally logged wood. ...

Environment Minister Say Samal claims Cambodia has put an end to illegal logging and timber exports to Vietnam, despite reports of continued, and even rising, levels of forest clearing and timber being transported to the Kingdom’s neighbor. ...

The government is failing to protect Cambodia’s forests, activists, civil society groups and students said during yesterday’s World Environment Day celebration in Phnom Penh. ...

Rewards will be given to those who provide local police with the exact time and place that illegal timber is transported through the Ton Hon Cambodia-Vietnam border checkpoint, the Kampot provincial police chief said yesterday. ...

Forestry officials in Svay Rieng province on Wednesday said border guards prevented them from seizing and inspecting a trio of trucks suspected of smuggling luxury wood into Vietnam, flagging the convoy through despite their protests. ...

Legal timber exports to Vietnam – the bulk of them rosewood – soared between 2013 and 2015, with the volume of logs exported increasing by a factor of 142 and seven times as much sawn wood passing across the border, according to a report by ...

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.   ...