Forests and forestry

A teenager was killed and a man was badly injured on Friday while they were illegally clearing forest land for an unidentified businessman on the border of Stung Treng and Kratie provinces, officials said. Kam Dek villager Chhoun Pourn, 17, and Kam Yun, 40, were ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court on Thursday charged an opposition CNRP commune chief with smuggling protected forest products after he was arrested while transporting logs to sell in Vietnam, officials said. Sev Nhang, who was elected chief of Batang commune in O’Ya­daw district for the Sam Rainsy ...

An ethnic Jarai family has been evicted from their Ratanakirri province village where they say they received death threats over a land dispute. This is the third time the family has abandoned their home after they field a lawsuit against three commune authorities in 2011, alleging ...

Hundreds of villagers in Preav Vihear’s Kulen district cut down a palm tree on Monday and used it to block provincial officials attempting to confiscate tonnes of luxury timber from their village, their representative said yesterday. Ri Sothun, a spokesman for more than 400 families in ...

A group of endangered Asian elephants found dead in Mondulkiri province on Sunday were likely slaughtered, investigators from conservation group WWF-Cambodia have found. The organisation said in a statement yesterday an investigation into the deaths in protected Phnom Prich Wildlife Sanctuary suggested the elephants were “slaughtered ...

The discovery of the remains of three endangered Asian elephants in Mondulkiri’s Phnom Penh Prich Wildlife Sanctuary has prompted conservation group World Wildlife Fund to launch an investigation into the animals’ deaths. Samrang Dy Vichet, director of the Wildlife Sanctuary, told the Post yesterday that villagers spotted the ...

Logging tycoon Try Pheap has come under fire from two separate reports alleging that he is using his vast network of concessions and licences to decimate protected forests across Cambodia. One of the reports, an exhaustive four-month investigation by a local NGO, also looked at the ...

A Stung Treng province district official on Sunday contradicted claims that logging in the area designated for the Sesan 2 dam had ceased a month ago, saying that it had only stopped last week after direct orders from the government to do so. On Thursday, Ministry ...

The government has ordered Ang & Associates Lawyer Co. Ltd., a company headed by well-known businessman Kith Meng, to cease logging in an area of Stung Treng province where a hydropower dam will be built. Sesan district governor Yeang Srey Sary said Thursday that a delegation ...

A colonel in the Royal Cambodian Navy yesterday denied accusations by the NGO Wildlife Alliance that naval officers opened fire on patrolling rangers on the Tatai River in Koh Kong province as they tried seizing an allegedly illegal shipment of rosewood. Colonel Tep Vuthy instead accused ...

NGO Wildlife Alliance has publicly accused members of the Royal Cambodian Navy of opening fire on patrolling rangers on the Tatai river in Koh Kong’s Smach Meanchey district after they tried to seize an allegedly illegal shipment of rosewood. At about 11pm on October 10, a ...

Forestry Administration officials on Friday confiscated 1,000 pieces of luxury wood on land belonging to a Vietnamese rubber company that has been repeatedly accused of illegal logging in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, local officials and human rights workers said Sunday. Romash Svat, a representative of some ...

At around 6 p.m. in Phnom Penh each evening, about 5,000 large brown bats, having spent the day dangling upside down from a tree at Wat Phnom, spread their huge wings and fly out to begin their nightly search for fruit. And as useful and ...

About 50 ethnic Jarai families in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district have sold their farmland and part of the forests their culture depends on to the sister of former Finance Minister Keat Chhon, rights group Adhoc said Monday. Last year, the ethnic minority Jarai in the district ...

The case of journalist Hang Serei Odom, who was found hacked to death and stuffed into the trunk of his Toyota Camry in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Chum district on September 11 last year, will be heard by the Appeal Court in Phnom Penh, a senior court ...

For the ethnic Bunong people in this northeastern province, animals are an integral part of the local economy. Pigs, chickens and water buffaloes offer a variety of sustenance and labour. But it’s the elephants that bring foreigners – and foreigners bring cash. “When I get tours, the ...

The Prey Lang Community Network of anti-logging activists announced yesterday that late last month it had accepted the Alexander Soros Foundation’s $25,000 Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Environmental and Human Rights Activism on behalf of slain environmental crusader Chut Wutty. ...

KOH KONG – The dullness of a rainy day accentuates the lush shades of green rainforest of the Cardamom Mountains in Koh Kong province. Float down the Tatai River and you see bobbing turquoise, red and yellow canoes tied up along the banks—in their vivid ...

Anti-logging activists wrote to the United Nations yesterday to call for the monitoring of a lawsuit in which they accuse hundreds of officials in Kampong Speu province’s Phnom Oral Wildlife Sanctuary of illegal deforestation. The Natural Resource and Wildlife Preservation Organization (NRWPO) listed 241 officials it ...

In Cambodia, there is talk of change. Not just from Hun Sen, the prime minister, who has promised reforms after his party suffered a significant blow in recent elections, but from environmental activists and campaigners, who say there has never before been such an opportunity ...

Two monks living a remote pagoda in Kampong Speu province’s Oral district said yesterday that a shot had been fired at their living quarters last Tuesday in what they suspected was a threat motivated by their conservation efforts and participation in an opposition rally. Venerables Sam ...

Cambodia’s only U.N.-backed carbon trading scheme is still nowhere near making any money for communities and logging in the area continues to threaten the very forests supposed to generate tens of millions of dollars over the next 30 years, community representatives and officials in charge ...

The government’s latest five-year strategy calls for a complete halt to economic land concessions (ELCs) and an inquiry into those still in the pipeline. But the plan has drawn scepticism from conservationists and rights groups, who pointed out that loopholes have been liberally applied after the ...

A community forest patrol of locals yesterday confiscated a large haul of illegally logged luxury wood that was being transported to the Vietnamese border in Mondolkiri province, local officials said. Commune police chief Pech Sotheary said the case has been referred to provincial forestry administration ...