Forests and forestry

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.   ...

Two trucks loaded with illegal timber were confiscated and five men were arrested en route to Vietnam on Sunday night in Kratie province’s Chet Borei district, according to Military Police who made the arrests. ...

The government has reversed course on a controversial decision to downsize the proposed boundaries of a long-awaited protected area for the beleaguered Prey Lang Forest, the largest lowland evergreen forest left in Southeast Asia.   ...

The owner of a luxury timber shop in Phnom Penh was fined 64.189 million riel (about $16,047) in absentia yesterday after being convicted of transporting, trading and stocking timber without authorization from the Forest Administration, according to court officials.     ...

Minister of Environment Say Sam Al has sent a letter to the Minister of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction asking to register nearly six million  hectares of land as protected under the Ministry of the Environment.    ...

More than 100 pieces of luxury rosewood bearing Cambodian names and a phone number were found by Thai police and forest conservation officers in a national park in Thailand’s Sa Kaeo province on Tuesday.   ...

In a startling admission yesterday, the Ministry of Agriculture finally acknowledged that the Kingdom’s forest cover has decreased rapidly over the past few decades, down from a high of 73 percent in 1965 to now, where only 49.5 percent of the country’s forests remain. ...