News

Military police in Svay Rieng province on Friday seized more than 250 kg of elephant tusks stashed inside 10 suitcases in a van heading for the Vietnamese border, officials said. This is the second such haul in the space of a month, leading to fears Cambodia ...

Logging by Vietnamese-owned concessionaire Company 72 has once again spilled the boundaries of its land in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district, this time without paying proper taxes to the Forestry Administration (FA), local forest conservation activist Romas Svang said yesterday. ...

An existing moratorium on economic land concessions should be no impediment to pouring more cash into the Kingdom’s booming, and highly criticised, rubber trade, industry executives in the capital heard yesterday, as many current ELCs can simply be recycled to a new crop of investors. Ly ...

As illegal logging con­tinues to take a toll on the country’s woodlands, civil society groups yesterday called on the government to stay true to its commitment of providing an extra two million hectares of community forest by 2029. During a two-day conference in the capital, participants ...

Several dozen families in Banteay Meanchey province involved in land dispute were given 100 hectares of replacement land in O’Chrou district yesterday, but have refused to accept it because it is already claimed by more than 230 other families, two village chiefs said. The provincial government ...

The Forestry Administration in Kampot province on Tuesday confiscated about 2 cubic meters of illegal timber from a truck in Toek Chhou district’s Stung Keo commune, officials said. The bust is at least the third in a week, with forestry officials confiscating 200 pieces of illegal ...

The Forestry Administration in Preah Vihear province on Saturday raided a remote cabin in Choam Ksan district where they found 200 pieces of illegally felled luxury wood, police said Sunday. The 15 cubic meters of wood uncovered included the Thnong, Beng and Neang Noun varieties, and ...

A brigadier general in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) whose home and rubber plantation in Mondolkiri province were raided by police last week claimed Sunday that the authorities had apologized to him after he threatened them with a lawsuit. Police had raided Brigadier General Chhit ...

Among the exotic wildlife that prowls Cambodia’s forests are large furry creatures that may be far more familiar to European and North American visitors than the ever-dwindling populations of large cats and beastly elephants. The Kingdom’s bears climb trees and devour honey just like their ...

The government reforested 80,693 hectares of land between 2008 and 2012 as part of its efforts to combat deforestation, a recent agriculture ministry report says, but these seemingly impressive statistics were reached by counting rubber trees and other agricultural crops as adequate replacements for forests. The ...

Cambodia’s first verified carbon credit program is up and running in the remote province of Oddar Meanchey. But experts say there are limited carbon credit buyers, and illegal deforestation remains a major threat to the stability to the project. ...

Villagers involved in a land dispute in Battambang province on Monday temporarily detained six men working for an agribusiness firm who were preparing the disputed land to be cleared, residents and police said. The six workers were using mine detectors to check for unexploded ordnance in ...

Seven police officers and an NGO staffer in Mondulkiri province escaped a potentially violent confrontation with illegal loggers on Wednesday, while a soldier who was accompanying the group claimed he received death threats from military police connected to the logging operation. Khleuv Krak, 40, a Royal ...

The Forestry Administration on Thursday said it could not comment on the accuracy of new, satellite-generated maps that suggest the government has been vastly overstating the country’s forest cover. Open Development Cambodia, an open data website, on Wednesday published a series of maps using U.S. satellite ...

A pair of endangered pileated gibbons will be released today into the forest in the Angkor Archaeological Park, the beginning of a project that could see the resettlement of many other animals that had been extirpated from the area, wildlife experts said. “We are hoping that ...

An indigenous Bunong minority community in Mondolkiri province’s Keo Seima district on Wednesday filed a complaint claiming that authorities had destroyed their homes, but authorities allege that the villagers are living on land owned by a private company. Villagers claim that since November, 37 homes in ...

Well-known timber magnate Try Pheap is preparing to expand cross-country with a scheme that already gives him exclusive rights to buy all the wood felled on economic land concessions (ELCs) in Ratanakkiri province, a spokesman for the businessman said. The Agriculture Ministry’s Forestry Administration in February ...

Government officials yesterday laid the blame for Cambodia’s deforestation on villagers gathering firewood. “Every day, they need fuel for cooking – that’s a lot of logging,” Chheng Kimsun, director general of the Forestry Administration, said at a workshop aimed at addressing sustainable forest management. Gathered at the ...

Villagers in Mondolkiri province filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc on Friday, saying that they had discovered loggers illegally felling trees in their local community forest who claimed to be working for businessman Try Pheap. Mr. Pheap, who owns plantations, mining concessions and special economic ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

Cambodia has recorded some 973 white-shoulder ibis in its wild, making the country the stronghold for this critically endangered species, the conservationists group said Thursday. BirdLife International and its partners including Cambodian Forestry Administration, People Resources and Conservation Foundation, Wildlife Conservation Society and Worldwide Fund for ...

An eco-tourism initiative in Mondulkiri hit a snag this week when authorities asked management to vacate overnight guests while provincial officials determine whether the project is properly licensed to operate a guesthouse. Guests of the Elephant Valley Project (EVP), which is located in a Forestry Administration ...