Environmental and biodiversity protection

More than 100 ethnic minority activists trying to protect community forests have been arrested, jailed, threatened and subjected to violence so far this year, a major local rights group has said. In a statement released yesterday, Adhoc condemned the “discriminatory” treatment of indigenous people who have ...

Villagers who will be displaced if the controversial Lower Sesan II dam is built called on the developers yesterday to postpone construction for five years, allowing time for a comprehensive resettlement scheme to be devised. But a government official dismissed their request as “beyond the pale”, ...

Representatives of fishing communities say illegal operations are critically threatening the nation’s fisheries. Corruption and collusion between authorities and illegal fishermen are at the root of the problem, they say. More than 100 representatives from these communities met in Phnom Penh Friday, in an effort to find ...

Officials from the Ministry of Mines and Energy yesterday met with villagers in Ratanakkiri province’s Taveng district about a gold mine they allege violates the law and introduces toxic chemicals into the nearby Sesan River. ...

An ongoing land dispute may become more than just an embittered ordeal for three Khmer Krom villagers after officials requested yesterday that a Takeo court levy them huge fines. According to representatives from Borei Choslar district’s Sangkum Meanchey village, they are only farming barren land that ...

A top court in Thailand agreed on Tuesday to hear a lawsuit brought by villagers against the country’s decision to purchase power from the planned Xayaburi mega dam in neighboring Laos, which green groups say could threaten the region’s environment and food security. Overruling a lower ...

More than 100 families living in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district have filed a complaint with authorities, claiming a rubber giant – already accused of illegal logging – filled in two natural lakes, provincial officials said yesterday. Villagers, along with government officials, say Vietnamese company Hong Anh Gai ...

A company ordered to cease its sand-dredging operation along the Sesan River in Ratanakkiri province after it was accused of illegally searching for gold is now defying the order, villagers claimed Monday. Discovery Power, a joint Chinese-Cambodian venture, was given a license to dredge sand for ...

The army created a new platoon on Monday to guard an area near the Areng Valley in Koh Kong province, where hundreds of ethnic minority residents have fiercely resisted plans by a Chinese company to build a hydropower dam that would flood their ancestral lands. The ...

Researchers have discovered a new population of banteng (Bos javanicus), a species of wild cattle, in northwestern Cambodia. The discovery was announced June 4, 2014 by Fauna and Flora International (FFI), and efforts are underway to implement conservation initiatives to protect the area and its newfound banteng, ...

A distinctive new wolf snake species discovered in Cambodia has been named in honour of Zoos Victoria, recognising their support provided to Fauna & Flora International’s (FFI) studies in the Cardamom Mountains over the last few years. The wolf snake is the latest species to be ...

Police in Kampong Thom province shut down a forest-protection training session yesterday, citing fears that it was encouraging residents to protest against logging in Prey Lang, activists and residents have said. Sar Mory, a deputy of the Cambodian Youth Network (CYN), said that his group organised ...

A conservation group has said its recent trip to Laos revealed that construction on a controversial hydropower dam decried by neighbouring Mekong countries is already under way. International Rivers representatives visiting the proposed site of the 260-megawatt Don Sahong Hydropower Project earlier this month say they ...

The temples of Angkor in Cambodia are known for their lost-world feel, thanks in part to trees and vegetation that have colonized the structures. While giant roots and trunks pouring over ancient blocks and carvings look cool, the trees are actually a destructive force acting on ...

Tigers and black bears look nothing alike, but their identical names in some Khmer dialects left some thinking that one of Cambodia’s most endangered species may be attacking people in the Cardamom Mountains. Sitting outside his Santre commune home in Pursat province’s Kravanh district, with bandages ...

Activists working in Prey Lang forest have accused military and police officers of being behind two illegal timber hauls they have intercepted. In the first case, an estimated 50 cubic metres of timber being transported through Kampong Thom’s Sandan district on homemade tractors was found last ...

Conservationists Fauna and Flora International was to send a team to Pursat province today to investigate a man’s claim that he was attacked by a tiger. Ngem Nget, a 51-year-old farmer in Phnom Kravanh district’s Santre commune, reported that while foraging in the Cardamom Mountains on ...

In Samrong Leu village, a picturesque community nestled deep in the verdant fields of Kors Kralor district, the acrid smell of smoke fills the air. Outside almost every house in this community, billows of smoke continuously emerge from the domes of homemade mud kilns, drifting around ...

A Pursat man’s reported encounter with a tiger in the Cardamom Mountains has left him injured and in fear, but it has left experts in doubt. On Sunday afternoon, Ngem Nget, a 51-year-old farmer in Phnom Kravanh district’s Santre commune, walked into the woods to forage ...

About 400 monks and villagers protested Sunday outside Wat Koh Puthivong pagoda in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district to protest what they say is a real estate company’s encroachment onto the pagoda’s land, including an island that monks consider sacred. During the protest, dozens of young ...

Military police joined forces with the Fisheries Administration in Kompong Thom province on Friday to arrest six men and confiscate four bulldozers being used to clear protected flooded forest in Stong district’s fisheries conservation area, officials said Sunday. District military police commander Khun Bunho said that ...

A fishing community that abandoned a stretch of the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh’s Russey Keo district earlier this month after dead fish began appearing in the water have brought their floating houses back home, authorities and community representatives said yesterday. The 29 families who ...

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, ...

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 ...