Forest cover

In the first six months of this year, rangers from the Ministry of Environment went on 14,422 patrols in protected natural areas and biodiversity corridors, investigated 4,238 cases of natural resource offences, imposed fines in 511 of those cases and sent 515 of the cases ...

A joint working group of the Preah Sihanouk Provincial Administration is inspecting a site at Bak Kang Mountain, which was designated state public property in 2002 but is now being cleared by a private company. ...

Kampong Speu provincial governor Vei Samnang has issued an order prohibiting clearing and settling on more than 281ha of state forest land in two locations after some residents illegally occupied and farm the land. ...

Mondulkiri provincial governor Svay Sam Eang urged officials and local authorities to intensify efforts to prevent forest crimes and illegal logging as these activities have increased. ...

Svay Leu district forestry administration office in Siem Reap province has given a month’s notice to the owners of homemade tractors impounded last week for transporting illegal timber. Authorities warned that if no action was taken the administration would take the case to court. ...

Forestry crimes including logging, poaching and encroachment on state forest land for private ownership increased considerably last year despite stricter law enforcement, according to an annual report by the Ministry of Environment. ...

The National Committee for the Prevention and Crackdown of Natural Resource Crimes still claims there are no large-scale forest crimes in the Kingdom, despite forest activists saying that logging is taking place because people are unemployed. ...

Illegal loggers have cleared 30-hectares of community forest land, close to the site of thousands of natural stone pillars in Mondulkiri province, felling hundreds of trees and leaving the area barren. ...

Police in Pursat province arrested a high-ranking military officer on Monday, accusing him of encroaching and clearing around 40 hectares of the state’s protected forest areas in Veal Veng district.​ ...

The provinces of Kampong Chhnang and Koh Kong yesterday guaranteed legal action against any individual found guilty of encroaching on or engaging in illicit land trade within state-protected forests. ...

Preah Sihanouk provincial governor Kuoch Chamroeun on Sunday warned that criminals destroying mangrove forests to occupy state land will face strict legal repercussions. The warning came as he attended the replanting of mangroves on 2ha that had been destroyed in Tuol Totoeng commune’s Chumpu Khmao ...

Ratanakkiri provincial and O’Yadav district police forces seized 30 logs of mixed timber from a plantation in Pak Nhay commune’s Lom village on Sunday. Police suspect traders hid the logs at the plantation while they waited to transport them to be sold in Vietnam. ...

The University of Copenhagen’s open letter used data from the University of Maryland’s Global Forest Change dataset and other data points to show that 7,510 hectares of forestland were lost at the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary in 2019, the worst loss since 2016 when the ...

The Environment Ministry yesterday refuted a claim by Wildlife Alliance that more than 200 hectares of mangrove forest had been cleared inside protected areas in Koh Kong province’s Peam Krasaop Wildlife Sanctuary. ...

The Wildlife Alliance yesterday discovered over 200 hectares of mangrove forests within Koh Kong province’s Peam Krasaop Wildlife Sanctuary were illegally cleared. ...

Major-general Chan Sam Ath was found guilty of violating the Forestry Law by the Stung Treng Provincial Court on Wednesday, but he will not be imprisoned because of poor health due to abdominal surgery.   ...

Forest activists claimed they had observed more cases of deforestation in the Prey Lang area than before the Covid-19 outbreak. They alleged that three companies had sent workers to log and transport timber with no crackdown by the relevant authorities. ...

The Ministry of Environment on Tuesday slammed a report by a local organisation which claimed the Prey Lang forest has lost 40,000ha in the last 18 years. Ministry of Environment spokesman Neth Pheaktra called the report by the Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN) “politically motivated” ...

Cambodia’s forest cover was over 73 per cent in 1975 but it has shrunk to only about 47 per cent last year. In its Human Development Report Cambodia 2019, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said deforestation was mainly caused by rising wood demand for ...

After the authorities on Friday and Saturday dismantled 49 of some 1,000 huts which had been built illegally on forest land in Siem Reap’s Phnom Kulen National Park, Banteay Srei district governor Khim Finan said on Sunday that a hunt was on for a group ...

As the impacts of climate change become more apparent worldwide, members of the public are connecting more weather events to the phenomenon. In March and April, for example, extreme heat baked mainland Southeast Asia. On April 20, Vietnam set an all-time observed record high temperature, 43 ...

Cambodia’s Beng Per Wildlife Sanctuary is symbolic of the country’s poor forestry management. Around 2,000 square kilometres (sq km) – around three times the size of Singapore – is lost to illegal logging in Cambodia every year where wildlife sanctuaries – despite their name – ...

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has reversed its previous order to allocate land to 48 families in Preah Sihanouk province’s Koki village – the scene of violent clashes between protesters and security forces – in order to follow procedure in trying to resolve ...

The Kampong Chhnang provincial authority and forestry officials on Thursday stopped a group of people from clearing degraded forest where the government plans to replant trees and turn into a protected area in Samaki Meanchey district’s Kraing Lvea commune. Four tractors were seized as evidence ...