Environment and natural resources

Cambodian authorities intervened in far fewer illegal fishing cases last year compared with 2012, when Prime Minister Hun Sen first banned commercial angling nationwide in a bid to replenish waterways and aid small-scale fishermen. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, which released an ...

Economic land concessionaires not abiding by their contracts could have their licences revoked if they have seriously breached the terms, Prime Minister Hun Sen has said. Illegally seizing forest land would be punished under the Law on Forestry, he said on Friday, speaking at an annual ...

A steep decline in the number of red-headed cranes, also known as Sarus cranes, has been recorded since early this year in southern Kien Giang province, the bird’s usual hot spot, compared to a sharp rise in a Cambodian sanctuary. Meanwhile, hundreds of them have ...

Residents along Cambodia’s coastline may want to relocate to higher ground in the wake of a climate-change assessment that predicts much of the Kingdom’s coast could be submerged by rising sea levels. Based on predictive models that take into account global temperature trends and melting ice ...

The Cambodian Fisheries Administration has begun a one-year study of a mollusc fishery in Kampong Chhnang province, the Mekong River Commission says. Launched in February and financed by the MRC Fisheries Programme, the pilot study aims to assess the status of the snail and clam fishery ...

The Mekong River Commission has documented 186 fish species identified by the Kunming Institute of Zoology as being found in the Upper Mekong Basin in China’s Yunnan province. A list of the species with their scientific and common Chinese names as well as their distribution in ...

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 ...

In the wake of several international scandals, the 120-megawatt Stung Atai hydropower plant in Pursat province and its transmission line will be inaugurated today in a celebration headed by Prime Minister Hun Sen. The $255 million hydropower project financed by China Development Bank has been operating ...

After its November launch in Hong Kong, Alila Villas Koh Russey will break ground late next month, initiating the construction of a world-class luxury resort. Alila Villas occupies 25 hectares on Koh Russey, an island in the Koh Rong archipelago in the Gulf of Thailand, with ...

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, ...

Forty families in Kampong Chhnang province’s Peani commune complained yesterday that a local factory has been polluting their land with toxic liquid waste. Kong Yom, 40, a representative of the 40 families in Krang Ta Ekh village, said yesterday that this is not the first time ...

A highly controversial, Chinese-backed hydropower project in the Areng Valley could be delayed in favour of mining, should “research” for the dam approved by Phnom Penh in February uncover precious metals or gems. Sinohydro Resources Ltd, a holding company for Sinohydro Group, was granted approval on ...

The seizure on Friday of a large haul of African elephant tusks in Svay Rieng province, only one month after police intercepted a large ivory haul in Siem Reap, could indicate that Cambodia is becoming a major transit point for illegal ivory, experts said Monday. The ...

A Chinese developer with a “family-like” relationship to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s bodyguard unit has accelerated construction at its $5 billion resort – ostensibly cancelled by royal decree in 2010 – in a protected national park in Preah Sihanouk province. The 3,300-hectare Golden Silver Gulf resort ...

Military police in Svay Rieng province on Friday seized more than 250 kg of elephant tusks stashed inside 10 suitcases in a van heading for the Vietnamese border, officials said. This is the second such haul in the space of a month, leading to fears Cambodia ...

In its race to cash in on hydropower without first addressing its downstream implications, Laos could pitch the region into a water crisis and jeopardise millions of Cambodian’s food security, conservation groups and Cambodian government officials said yesterday. “Lao PDR is exploiting the Mekong River to ...

Three Cambodian illegal loggers arrested more than a year ago in Thailand were released by the Thai authorities yesterday, and returned to their home country, officials said. ...

On the shore of Koh Kong province’s Kiri Sakor district overlooking a cluster of islands, a flourishing new golf course lies vacant but for a handful of workers tending its empty greens. The Romanesque hotel behind it, replete with a bold central dome, luxury VIP suites ...

Logging by Vietnamese-owned concessionaire Company 72 has once again spilled the boundaries of its land in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district, this time without paying proper taxes to the Forestry Administration (FA), local forest conservation activist Romas Svang said yesterday. ...

Cambodian experts on Thursday expressed concerns over the Laos Don Sahong dam development project, saying the proposed hydroelectric dam would pose a serious threat to the existence of the biodiversity on the Mekong River in Cambodia. Some 90 conservationists, environmentalists, development partners, academia, fishery scientists, and ...

Already under attack by overfishing, pollution and deforestation, Tonle Sap Lake fisheries face an even bigger threat in the form of hydropower dams, according to experts. Laos’ planned Don Sahong Hydropower Project in particular has environmentalists fearing an emptier, less bio-diverse lake, and a nation pitched ...

As villagers in Koh Kong province’s Areng Valley continue to block Sinohydro Corp employees from entering the area where the Stung Cheay Areng dam is planned, conservationists and rights workers have spoken of the havoc it will wreak if it goes ahead. In terms of the ...