Forest cover

Farmers in Cambodia who depend on forest products for their livelihood face an uncertain future because of dwindling forests. ...

CNRP lawmakers have written to Prime Minister Hun Sen asking him to stop the ongoing illegal logging of northeast Cambodia’s Virachey National Park, which they said they witnessed during a recent trip and blamed on businessmen An Mady and Try Pheap. ...

Around 100 activists, including Buddhist monks, gathered in front of Cambodia’s parliament Monday to demand that lawmakers and the country’s Forestry Administration take action against illegal logging in endangered Prey Lang forest. ...

A group of indigenous villagers in northeastern Cambodia’s Stung Treng province called on local forestry officials Wednesday to crackdown on illegal saw mills and to provide them with protection after they received death threats from unsanctioned loggers of luxury timber. ...

Satellite images suggest tropical forests from the Amazon to the Philippines are disappearing at a far more rapid pace than previously thought, a University of Maryland team of forest researchers say. Tropical Asia showed the second largest increase in deforestation with 0.8 million hectares (about ...

Newly released maps using U.S. satellite data show that Cambodia continued to suffer major deforestation in 2013, much of it in nominally protected forests and wildlife sanctuaries. In November 2013, the University of Maryland released what it said was the first study to combine a consistent ...

Amid promises reiterated by the government yesterday that it will take a tougher stance on economic land concessions, logging tycoon Try Pheap minimally reduced his sweeping natural resource empire, returning more than 20,000 hectares of undeveloped forestry. It was unclear what kind of arrangement prompted Pheap ...

More than 100,000 hectares of forest have been replanted across the country since 2008, according to a government report – but about 90 per cent of that amount can be chalked up to private plantations. Produced by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the report, ...

A huge area of Ratanakkiri province’s Virachey National Park has been declared a protected area under a European Union-funded plan that government officials say will shift forest communities away from dependence on depleted forest byproducts. Chhay Samith, head of protected natural areas at the Ministry of ...

In yet another attempt to stem the looting of Cambodia’s forests, lakes and rivers, the Interior Ministry has given all cities and provinces until July 20 to submit detailed reports on all the illegal logging and fishing taking place in their jurisdictions. The latest initiative comes ...

Ethnic Bunong in Mondolkiri province’s Sen Monorom City said Tuesday that they would no longer cooperate with local officials in fighting illegal logging and that they would begin to confiscate loggers’ equipment and burn illicit timber themselves. At a press conference in Phnom Penh, representatives of ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

A deputy district military police chief in Kampong Thom’s Santuk district is under scrutiny for allegedly clearing up to seven hectares of community forest land for personal gain, and district officials are investigating the case with the aim of presenting it at the provincial court ...

The scale of mass logging in once-dense woodlands in Cambodia’s north now more closely resembles the free-for-all of a gold rush than the sustainable forestry more often associated with these communities. With the financial backing of powerful businessmen, villagers in three districts of Preah Vihear are ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen’s brother Hun Neng and a Vietnamese state-owned rubber firm are involved in an illegal logging cartel involving several well-connected companies operating on a “massive scale” in the embattled Prey Lang forest, forest monitors working in the area allege. Video footage and photographs ...

A company in Mondulkiri’s Sok San commune has been gradually cutting down a community forest, pushing more than 100 families off their land, villagers said yesterday. “That land belongs to us, the government granted it to us in 1999. But the company invaded and let us ...

A forest patrol in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district spotted five loggers clearing the community’s ancestral forest on Tuesday, villagers and rights group Adhoc said yesterday. Adhoc provincial coordinator Chhay Thy said that three representatives of nearly 200 ethnic Jarai families in Pak Nhai commune asked for help ...

The director of the Lumphat district forestry department in Ratanakkiri province was charged and put in pre-trial detention on Monday for allegedly logging on protected land around Ou’Sinlair waterfall, police and court officials revealed yesterday. Deputy Police Chief Klol Thoeun said that Meung Bunthin was picked ...

For three days last week, the Preah Roka forest in Preah Vihear province was silent, the usual cacophony of chainsaws notably absent. The buzz of trucks arriving empty and later leaving heavily loaded with timber had been replaced by ethnic Kuoy villagers, about 300 in all, ...

About 200 families from Mondulkiri’s Keo Seima district filed a complaint on Sunday against a Vietnamese-owned company alleged to have razed more than 3,500 hectares of community forest since 2010, villagers and a rights group said yesterday. A rubber concessionaire identified as Sovan Reachsey has been ...

The government reforested 80,693 hectares of land between 2008 and 2012 as part of its efforts to combat deforestation, a recent agriculture ministry report says, but these seemingly impressive statistics were reached by counting rubber trees and other agricultural crops as adequate replacements for forests. The ...

The constant hum of chainsaws almost drowned out Buddhist monk Sam Kim Sath, 65, as he stood this week in a wildlife sanctuary on Oral Mountain, Cambodia’s highest peak. Forest in the Phnom Oral Wildlife Sanctuary, in the eastern part of the Cardamoms, is being “obliterated” ...