Logging a resource issue, says official
A forestry official with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) who is usually tight-lipped acknowledged last week that his agency has struggled to combat illegal logging, blaming a shortage of manpower and entrenched opportunistic logging by villagers – explanations that were laughed off in some quarters yesterday. In an interview last Tuesday at the Forests Asia Summit, organised by the Center for International Forestry Research in Jakarta, MAFF Secretary of State Ty Sokhun also played down accusations that authorities are slow to respond to – and are even the targets of – complaints of illegal logging, The real difficulty in fighting logging, he continued, was that the forests simply covered too much ground for his roughly 1,000 “forest experts” to patrol. … Sokhun maintained that measures to help villagers make money from forests would encourage them to turn from logging to conservation, but Ouch Leng, director of the Cambodian Human Rights Task Force, said that it was actually the villagers who were leading the fight against illegal loggers in spite of government inaction. … Opposition lawmaker-elect Son Chhay was quick to agree, blaming mass logging on large-scale operations, and calling Sokhun’s assertion that officials were quick to respond to reports of illegal logging “completely rubbish”. …
May Titthara and Stuart White
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/logging-resource-issue-says-official
