Environment and natural resources

Before it takes action on ‘relocating’ Indian tigers, Cambodia’s forestry administration is on a special mission – scouting for signs of indigenous tigers in its dense jungles, where according to reports they are “functionally extinct”.   ...

Touch Tren used to fish the Tonle Sap Lake’s flooded Ek Phnom district for a living, but after finding the bodies of 30 black monkeys, dead from thirst in the nearby Veal Don Om forest earlier this year, he had a change of heart and ...

Top officials on Monday said the government would be auctioning off some of the 70,000 cubic meters of wood authorities have seized in recent months, backtracking on a recent pledge Hun Sen made to stop the sales. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday told Cambodians to stop hunting and poisoning wild birds, whose populations are already under strain from drought and forest fires.   ...

More than 4,000 people in Cambodia cycled here on Saturday to celebrate Europe Day and to increase environmental awareness. The event was organized by the European Union (EU) in Cambodia in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, and the Phnom Penh Municipality. ...

Twenty-nine Cambodian men were arrested while logging rosewood in the mountains of Thailand’s Prachinburi province on Wednesday, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement on Friday.  ...

Robin Loveridge had rolled out of his hammock at dawn to go on a walk along the Sekong River in Siem Pang forest when he saw three bright gold faces peering down at him from the tree canopy. ...

Nine Cambodians were arrested and sent back to Cambodia from Thailand yesterday after Thai soldiers allegedly caught them logging illegally in the Dangrek Mountains. ...

Conservationists are expressing concern that some of the Kingdom’s endangered birds are not reproducing this year due to extreme heat stress, inability to find enough food and habitat loss from wildfires and human encroachment. ...

Five endangered polecats were rescued yesterday morning after provincial military police in collaboration with Wildlife Alliance staff stopped a man on a motorbike who was attempting to sell them at the Veal Ring market in Preah Sihanouk’s Real Rinh commune, according to Prey Nob district ...

Soldiers allegedly protecting an illegal logging operation in Oddar Meanchey threatened to shoot a group of forest patrollers that stumbled across their logging site on Sunday, Rattanak Rokha community forest patrol leader Chea Chuong said yesterday, though an RCAF commander denied the account. ...

A landmark decision by Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen could see almost a million hectares of forest reclassified as protected areas in a country with one of the highest deforestation rates in the world.​ But the order, circulated on Friday, to transfer control of the sites ...

The core of one of Cambodia’s most important and abused forests —Prey Lang—was officially de­clared a protected area this week af­ter years of campaigning by local ac­tivists and foreign conservationists.    ...

After setting up the National Anti-Deforestation Committee (NADC) in an attempt to show that the government was trying to stop illegal logging, Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday called on all citizens to join the battle, saying people even had the right to make citizen arrests ...

More than 40 monkeys were rescued by customs officials at the Cambodia-Vietnam border in Memot yesterday, according to Police Lieutenant Colonel Chuon Phally, the Deputy Commander at Tbong Khmom military camp. ...

The smuggling of illegally cut timber from northeastern Cambodia’s Ratanakiri  province to Vietnam has dramatically increased since around April 17, with smugglers traveling the roads between the two countries day and night, sources in the region say. ...

The Angkor Elephant Company has pledged to reduce the working hours of its animals following the death last Friday of Sambo, one of 14 elephants it uses to carry tourists around the Angkor Wat temple complex, although critics say anything short of their release from ...

The Apsara Authority announced yesterday that it is considering the selective removal of some trees inside the 401-square-kilometer Angkor Park, saying that only those that pose potential risk to the park’s visitors and temples would be cut down. ...

Cambodia’s Royal Turtle is nearly extinct, with fewer than 10 left in the wild, because increased sand dredging and illegal clearance of flooded forest have shrunk its habitat, a conservationist group warned Monday. ...

The Ministry of Environment conducted a workshop yesterday to discuss the government’s plan to designate five forest areas, totaling about one million hectares of land, as protected. ...

Four farmers were arrested and charged yesterday over allegations of killing an endangered banteng, considered to be one of the most beautiful species of wild ox, in a protected forest in Mondulkiri, according to officials. ...

Twelve loggers were arrested on Saturday while harvesting timber illegally inside the Phnom Prich Wildlife Sanctuary in Pich Chreada’s Pou Chrey commune, according to a local media report. ...

The Ministry of Environment has given two NGOs the go-ahead to implement their proposed management plans for five protected community forest areas in Battambang and Pursat provinces, projected to cover 1,064 families and 2,761 hectares.   ...

Hundreds of dead bats were found inside Siem Reap’s Phnom Bouk temple in Banteay Srey district after district police and environmental officers were notified by local residents on Tuesday. ...