Forests and forestry

Dozens of Cambodian prisoners were released by Thai authorities yesterday after serving 20-month prison sentences in Thailand for crossing the border illegally to log rosewood. The group of 37, all arrested within Thai territory on March 12 last year, were released through the Chaom Sangman checkpoint ...

A district-level Environment Ministry official on Thursday retracted comments he made last week when he claimed proper monitoring of logging inside Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary was impossible because his ministry did not know the boundaries of private land concessions in the protected zone. On November ...

Now about six months old, Hope is still a little clumsy when climbing trees. Hope’s sidekick, named “173,” follows her around as if they were inseparable twins. Together, they swing in a hammock, bathe in a pool and, sometimes, climb up the metal bars of their ...

Ethnic Jarai villagers in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district have accused border officials of not only allowing illegal Vietnamese loggers to cross the border unimpeded, but also of taking their side in negotiations with a community forest patrol. Members of the patrol in Paknhai commune’s Lam village said ...

A private agro-industrial company has come under fire from villagers in Ratanakkiri province who say it has illegally felled resin-producing trees that are their main source of income. More than 1,000 trees in the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district are under threat, the villagers ...

Villagers in Kandal province alleged yesterday that officials had “tricked” them into thumb-printing a petition supporting tycoon Try Pheap’s claim that he is not involved in illegal logging and endorsing his defamation suit against two villagers. In a scathing report released last Wednesday, the Cambodian Human ...

Former Environment Minister Mok Mareth on Tuesday accused the media of having “twisted the truth” in reporting on illegal logging in Ratanakkiri province, where rights groups and independent forestry monitors say the natural environment is being pillaged and ethnic minority communities impoverished by illegal loggers ...

The rights group Adhoc says it is monitoring “at least 100” individuals who are complicit in forestry crimes across the country. These include “high-ranking officers” of the police and military police; business tycoons; and ordinary citizens across 11 provinces, Chan Soveth, a lead investigator for the ...

Local communities that lost their land via economic land concessions to private companies are now being paid by those same firms to illegally fell the trees that once sustained their livelihoods, a group of five advocacy groups contended yesterday. At a press conference, the NGOs singled ...

A group of Cambodian NGOs threatened on Monday to expose more cases of forestry crime involving businessmen and the police, saying they were unshaken by a defamation suit filed by top tycoon accused of illegal logging and land-grabbing. Representatives of the five organizations told reporters Monday ...

Tycoon Try Pheap has filed a defamation complaint against two people quoted in an NGO report released last week that accused him of illegal logging and widespread land grabbing, summonses obtained yesterday reveal. The documents, bearing the signature of Kandal Provincial Court prosecutor Sam Rithy Veasna, ...

Forest land in Asia-Pacific countries has grown overall since 2002, according to a study released last week, but Cambodia was one of only three countries surveyed to buck the trend. Out of 14 countries included in the study by the Regional Community Forestry Training Center (RECOFTC), ...

Like most millennium-old structures discovered in the forests of Cambodia, the locals had known all along about this one. Jarai minority villagers in this remote spot in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district not only knew about it, but they revered the red-brick temple, using it as a ...

The Vietnamese Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) company, the majority shareholder of several economic land concessions in Ratanakkiri province, on Friday rebuffed accusations that it had logged forests and forced evictions, claiming that its activities improved the environment and the livelihoods of locals. Through several companies, ...

The assistant of a lumber tycoon accused of major deforestation and forced evictions rejected Thursday the findings of a recent report by local rights groups. The Cambodian Human Rights Task Force said in its report that some 1,400 families had been pushed from their land by ...

A month after a company owned by tycoon Kith Meng was ordered to suspend logging the reservoir area of the controversial Lower Sesan II dam, the government yesterday threatened legal action against it if its orders aren’t followed. In a letter obtained by the Post yesterday, the Council ...

The Forestry Administration fined 16 ethnic Tumpoun villagers $400 each for allegedly logging within the Yak Oum tourism site in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district on Wednesday, said Chhay Thy, an investigator for the rights group Adhoc. The villagers were accused of logging after clearing a patch of ...

The Ministry of Environment on Thursday denied that a private agro-industry firm had been issued an “unofficial” land concession inside Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, as stated on Monday by the provincial governor. In response to claims by local officials that Daun Penh Agrico Co. Ltd. ...

A district-level Environment Ministry official in Ratanakkiri province on Wednesday claimed that he had no way to determine the legality of logging operations by firms with private land concessions inside the province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary. The claim by Chou Sopheak, director of Lumphat district’s environment department, ...

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has released a nine-month status report on 2013’s illegal timber seizures, saying it had confiscated, among other things, more than 2,000 kilograms of rosewood – a figure that represents only a tiny fraction of seizures reported by the Post this ...

Thai forestry officials killed three Cambodians who were illegally logging on Tuesday, in what they said was a shootout in Thailand’s Sisaket province, a border official said Wednesday. The latest deaths bring the number of Cambodians who have been shot while logging across the border this ...

An “unofficial” land concession granted earlier this year to an agro-industry firm that has logged luxury hardwood in Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary is in violation of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s 2012 moratorium on new economic land concessions (ELCs), a government spokesman said Tuesday. Phay Siphan, ...

Logging tycoon Try Pheap’s rapidly expanding land empire, criticised by rights groups for displacing families and encroaching on protected forest areas, has grown to almost 70,000 hectares in size and is helping to facilitate a cross-border illegal logging operation, a report released today alleges. The Cambodian ...

Cambodia lost more than 7 percent of its forest cover over the past 12 years—the fifth fastest rate in the world—according to a new study of global forest cover change that sharply contradicts the government’s own rosier figures. Published Friday in the journal Science and led ...