Protected areas

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. ...

A Japanese company, A2A Town (Cambodia), has submitted a request to the Cambodian Ministry of Environment to establish helicopter flights from Phnom Penh to Preah Soramrit Kossamak Kirirom National Park in Kampong Speu province.​​ ...

More than 100 monks from across the Kingdom will gather in Prey Lang forest on July 2 for four days before travelling to Phnom Penh to protest against illegal logging and other environmental threats to the forest, activist monk Venerable But Buntenh said. ...

Members of local conservation group the Forest Protection Community announced plans last week to use their own staff members to patrol an area of forest in Anlong Veng that could be decimated by illegal loggers within months. ...

Military police in Ratanakkiri province working with the NGO Wildlife Alliance confiscated 40 kg of bushmeat from two vendors at a Banlung City market Thursday morning but let the women go with a warning. ...

The European Union ambassador on Wednesday called on the Cambodian government to help combat climate change, foremost by reducing red tape for communities who want to form groups to protect what remains of the country’s forests. ...

Rangers in eastern Cambodia’s Seima Protected Forest have reported seizing 32 animals in three separate busts over the past week, including more than a dozen endangered tortoises. ...

Activists in Prey Lang forest yesterday seized chainsaws and illegally felled timber from a group of loggers as they continued to “ordain” the woodland’s largest trees in an effort to stop further offences. ...

Cambodian officials from two provinces bordering Thailand say they are awaiting confirmation of a meeting with Thai counterparts, to discuss illegal export of timber. ...

Officials charged with protecting Cambodia’s Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary are colluding with loggers responsible for felling at least 300 trees each day, according to activists in the area. ...

The World Wildlife Fund has called for closer cooperation between Cambodia and Laos to protect the Mekong River dolphin, in the wake of the death this week of a female thought to be one of less than 85 left in the river. ...

A network of about 400 activists completed a five-day patrol of the unprotected 650,000-hectare Prey Long forest in the country’s north Sunday, seizing and burning illegally logged wood and confiscating chainsaws from those they discovered felling trees. ...

About 400 community activists on Thursday set out on a five-day patrol of Cambodia’s sprawling— and unprotected—Prey Long forest to root out illegal loggers and the illicit clearing of the area’s commercial farms, making for the largest patrol by the Prey Long Community Network in ...

Experts involved in the protection of Cambodia’s national bird, the giant ibis, have lauded the successes of an ongoing conservation scheme, and offered cause for optimism that the animal can overcome its current status as critically endangered. ...

Villagers in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadav district have filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc against a logging company they say has claimed more than 9,000 hectares of community forest as its own and threatened residents against using the land. ...

Twenty-eight hard-shell turtles and eight snakes – weighing more than 50 kilograms – were seized from a minivan in Kampong Thom’s Kampong Svay district on Wednesday. ...

The 21st century welcomed its first baby gibbon at Cambodia’s Angkor Archaeological Park, in a celebrated step towards the conservation of an endangered species. ...

As the Mekong Irrawaddy dolphin population steadily declines, conservation groups have voiced concern that the critically endangered species may be swimming toward extinction if drastic measures are not soon taken to protect them. The numbers tell a depressing tale: From 2011 to 2014, 23 dolphins were ...

Forest and community activists in a northwestern province in Cambodia have expressed concerns about illegal loggers who have started producing charcoal for export to Thailand,destroying protected areas of community forests in the process. ...

The government says it seized less rosewood from illegal loggers in Banteay Meanchey province in 2014 than the year before thanks to stricter enforcement, following a meeting Wednesday to review its anti-logging activities in the area. ...

The new director-general of the international environmental group WWF, Marco Lambertini, met Tuesday with Environment Minister Say Sam Al to raise concerns over development projects that could have harmful environmental impacts, and one in particular that could derail plans to reintroduce tigers to Cambodia. ...

Three environment officials in Mondulkiri province are being sued by ethnic minority villagers for allegedly using a permit to build two ranger stations as a pretence to illegally log more than 4,000 cubic metres of luxury wood. ...

Environment officials in Ratanakkiri have over the past 10 days confiscated more than 500 pieces of valuable Sokrom wood found stockpiled throughout the province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary by illegal loggers, officials said Sunday. ...

Villagers in Stung Treng province displeased local authorities on Saturday by holding a traditional ceremony calling upon a powerful local spirit to curse those behind the construction of the Lower Sesan 2 dam. ...