Environment and natural resources

After spending the last three months under the watchful eye of their own personal retinue of bodyguards, nine endangered royal turtles successfully broke free from their shells on Tuesday and were transferred to the Koh Kong Reptile Conservation Centre, where they will be raised. ...

Fourteen community representatives speaking for thousands of families yesterday petitioned the South Korean Embassy, Environment Ministry and Forestry Administration to halt the expansion of a controversial “reforestation” project by a Korean company situated between the protected Prey Lang forest and Mekong River. Their petition – ...

An environmental ranger and a village chief were questioned yesterday by the Pailin Provincial Court for allegedly colluding to grab, clear and sell land in a protected area supported by the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation, according to officials. ...

Authorities intercepted four trucks carrying 81 pieces of illegal luxury timber at a checkpoint in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadav district last Friday, District Military Police Commader Sok Min said yesterday. ...

The Mekong River Commission held its second stakeholder meeting on Laos’s controversial proposed Pak Beng dam on Friday, giving involved parties the opportunity to hear responses to concerns raised at the first meeting in February. ...

Cambodian and Vietnamese officials have received millions of dollars in bribes from Vietnamese timber traders as part of a cross-border “conspiracy” to log vast swathes of Ratanakkiri province and funnel the timber to Vietnam, according to a damning report by the Environmental Investigation Agency released ...

Villagers in Preah Vihear’s Choam Ksan district confronted a group of soldiers, preventing them from felling timber in their community forest by confiscating one of their trucks, a local official said yesterday. ...

A conservation NGO official yesterday said he planned to ask microfinance lenders to better scrutinise their loans after a spate of cases over the last month showed that such loans had been used by illegal loggers to purchase chainsaws and tractors for transporting timber. ...

According to the boats’ inhabitants, who raise fish underneath their floating homes in Russei Keo district’s Chraing Chamreh I commune, the move was prompted by a mass die-off of fish last weekend due to increasing water temperatures.  ...

More than a tonne of rosewood and the plateless car carrying it were seized in Oddar Meanchey province yesterday after authorities received a report about a Vietnamese woman and her workers trying to set the vehicle on fire. ...

Environment Ministry officials in Ratanakkiri province are hunting for timber traders who on Sunday set ablaze 300 logs of luxury wood in Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, one of several protected areas raided by Vietnamese loggers in recent months. ...

Police in Ratanakkiri province Thursday’stopped a bus and arrested two Vietnamese men—the driver and a bus company employee—who were attempting to transport about 300 kg of luxury-grade timber across the border to Vietnam, officials said. ...

Around 600 hectares of the protected Southern Cardamom National Park in Koh Kong have been illegally cleared and sold off for cultivation since 2013, sometimes by local authorities, according to the conservation organisation Wildlife Alliance. ...

The manager of an illegal timber warehouse owned by Lieutenant General Chheng Long was arrested in Kampong Speu on Wednesday, although Long and his son-in-law remain at large. ...

Authorities in Vietnam’s Gia Lai province have recently stopped at least nine overloaded timber trucks crossing into the country from the Kingdom, despite the Cambodian government ostensibly banning wood exports to its eastern neighbour, according to a Vietnamese news report. ...

Ratanakkiri provincial authorities yesterday seized a large cache of luxury wood and arrested four people about to sell the timber to Vietnam. ...

A vital road linking Kandal province to the Vietnamese border has been seriously damaged after the banks of the Mekong river collapsed in Lerk Dek district. ...

The Natural Resource and Wildlife Preservation Organization, a conservation organisation in Kampong Speu, pledged yesterday to file a letter of complaint to authorities after learning that 6 hectares of protected forestland were cleared illegally. ...

Customs officers have released a pair of trucks that local officials said were seized late last month while being used to smuggle timber belonging to business mogul Kith Meng into Vietnam in breach of a government ban, according to police. ...

Record low temperatures and unseasonable rainfall over the past week were a glimpse into the potential, intensifying effects of climate change in Cambodia, experts said, a phenomenon that studies suggest could seriously hinder future agricultural productivity through flooding, unpredictable rains and warming of up to ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has called on the Agriculture Ministry to do more to prevent land grabbing in the country’s endangered flooded forests.Speaking at the closing ceremony of the Agriculture Ministry’s annual meeting yesterday, Mr. Hun Sen said encroachment risks wiping out fish populations that ...

Authorities in Ratanakkiri province have confiscated about 700 small pieces of luxury-grade wood found on an empty plot of land belonging to Yeay Pralit, a timber trader whom local authorities had long suspected of committing forest crimes, deputy provincial court prosecutor Hak Phoan said on ...

After a rampage that destroyed homes and terrified villagers, a rogue elephant was shot by police in Mondulkiri early on Friday morning, with one local mahout saying the unfortunate killing was an outgrowth of a changing way of life that has seen elephants’ traditional work ...

Experts from the Institute of Standards of Cambodia (ISC) inspected Chinese-owned Rui Feng sugar company’s factory this week after suspicions that its runoff had caused last month’s mass fish deaths in Preah Vihear. ...