Environment and natural resources

Conservationists in Koh Kong province have found a nest of 16 eggs of the critically endangered royal turtle, the Wildlife Conservation Society announced today. The discovery in Sre Ambel district, the first of the year, was made on February 3 by WCS staff working with the ...

Kampong Speu provincial authorities on Friday said they will reclaim more than 2,000 hectares of land inside the Phnom Oral Wildlife Sanctuary, though six officials interrogated earlier this month for allegedly grabbing the land will only be “educated”. Oral district deputy police chiefs Prak Moul and ...

Anti-economic crime officers from Kampong Speu provincial police and Thporng district forces have uncovered eight unlicensed wood workshops as part of an effort to clamp down on forestry crime. District police chief Hun Sok Hon said the crackdown would be ongoing throughout his district until all ...

Two Cambodians and a Thai national were arrested by Thai soldiers on Tuesday night for illegal logging and transporting rosewood over the border to Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey province.​ ...

The Wildlife Conservation Society has said it is committed to continue working with the authorities and other partners to protect Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary after three conservationists, including one WCS staff member were killed last month. Tern Soknai, a forest ranger with the Environment Ministry, Sek ...

Nearly 400 members of the Prey Lang Community Network will hold the annual Prey Lang ceremony in late March to commemorate and preserve indigenous identities and promote the forest’s potential. Meanwhile, Prey Lang activists have claimed illegal logging still exists in the area, even though the ...

More than a month after businesses on a prime stretch of Occheuteal Beach were told to pack up and leave, officials in Preah Sihanouk province are still unaware of local conglomerate Royal Group’s plans for the space. Evictions on the beach began around Christmas time, ...

Two Mother Nature activists, who were released from prison yesterday, said they had been “robbed” of their freedom for the past five months after being arrested for documenting suspected illegal sand-bearing vessels in Koh Kong without evidence that they had committed a crime.​ ...

Businesses expect the establishment of Cambodia’s first marine national park covering seven coastal islands to boost tourism in the area, while government officials said yesterday it would not affect private development scheduled for the islands. ...

The kingdom’s first wastewater treatment plant will be built in Phnom Penh’s Dangkor district, with $27 million in assistance from the Japan International Cooperation Agency. Sam Piseth, director of the municipal department of public works and transport, told reporters on Saturday that the treatment plant would ...

The government announced last week the establishment of the country’s first marine national park, the Koh Rong National Park, which covers the Koh Rong archipelago off the coast of Sihanoukville. The new national park, set up by a sub-decree signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen, aims ...

The killing of three conservationists patrolling Cambodia’s biggest carbon credit project exposes the nearly insurmountable conflicts of interest plaguing schemes in which huge corporations such as Disney and Virgin Atlantic have invested millions of dollars, observers say. Military Police Officer Sek Wathana, Environment Ministry Ranger Teurn ...

Forest patrollers and rights groups are questioning why the Oddar Meanchey Forestry Administration has yet to take action after a soldier transporting illegal timber allegedly beat and threatened to kill a patroller last month. ...

Cambodia’s first marine national park was established yesterday, seemingly replacing and expanding upon a marine protection area established for the Koh Rong archipelago in 2016. ...

Military police, forestry administration officers and Wildlife Alliance officials on Wednesday raided a house in Pursat province used to facilitate the illegal wildlife trade, seizing nearly 80 kilos of snakes. ...

Kampong Speu provincial anti-economic crime police and Thporng district police yesterday morning seized six tractor loads of timber being smuggled out of the Phnom Oral Sanctuary. Kim Yon, deputy district police chief, said six homemade tractors were caught transporting the wood from the area. ...

The value of logs and sawn wood exported from Cambodia to Vietnam last year increased by about $31.5 million compared to 2016, customs data has shown. The Vietnamese data, obtained by Khmer Times yesterday, said about 163,071 cubic metres of Cambodian logs were imported to the ...

Human rights representatives from NGO Adhoc and the United Nations have been asked to intervene in a land dispute between villagers and an army lieutenant they say was granted a land title illegally inside a protected community forest in Oddar Meanchey province. ...

A Cambodian representative to the Mekong River Commission (MRC) said yesterday that new guidelines for hydropower development agreed to late last month don’t fully address threats to the health of the imperiled waterway. ...

Kampong Thom provincial police raided a wood workshop hidden in the forest in Sandan district on Sunday morning. District police chief Oung Maly said the workshop was built illegally and had no licence for operation. ...

A 55-year-old Vietnamese man was charged by Kampong Thom Provincial Court yesterday for illegally clearing more than six hectares of land in a protected forest. Provincial military police officer Keo Savoeun identified the suspect as Nguyen Duc Nhan, an excavator driver for a Vietnamese rubber plantation ...

Stung Treng provincial authorities on Friday shut down an illegal sand dredging operation on the Sesan River and confiscated equipment after having warned the company to cease operations since December, officials said yesterday. ...

Authorities in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary seized a stockpile of first- and second-grade luxury timber on Saturday, while a truck hauling wood was intercepted by authorities in Kratie province in the early hours of yesterday morning. No arrests have been made in either case, authorities ...

Five more suspects have been arrested and are being interrogated by authorities in relation to the murder of three forest patrollers last Tuesday in Mondulkiri’s Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary, authorities confirmed yesterday. ...