តំបន់​ការពារ

Prime Minister Hun Sen has signed off on four more economic land concessions (ELCs), all in protected areas, despite placing a moratorium on granting such leases on May 7. Since the May 7 sub-decree, the premier has now signed off on seven concessions totalling 56,586 hectares ...

Commune and village officials in Kratie province yesterday threatened to shut down a community meeting on the protection of Prey Long forest because the organizers had failed to get permission and allegedly invited only opposition party activists. The authorities eventually allowed the meeting to proceed, after ...

Banteay Meanchey’s provincial environment department, a local company and two bulldozer drivers, have sued four villagers in Banteay Meanchey province over their alleged role in a violent land protest in February. The villagers, who have been summoned for questioning this week, stand accused of intentional property ...

In an effort to increase fish stocks, the Ministry of Agriculture on Wednesday adopted a sub-decree to create four conservation areas in Kandal, Kompong Cham, Prey Veng and Takeo provinces where all fishing activities will be prohibited. Signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen on April 6, ...

A married couple and another man were called before a judge yesterday after being charged with clearing protected forest in Koh Kong province’s Kandorl commune. Kry Deuy, his wife, Moeung Yan, and a man named Soun Sareth cleared about 16 hectares of state-protected forest to cultivate ...

Community activists and conservationists commemorating slain environment activist Chut Wutty on the weekend used the occasion to shed light on what they allege are the shadowy practices of a logging company in the southwestern Cardamom forests. Activists amongst the hundreds of people who travelled to Koh ...

A Ministry of Agriculture official said yesterday he was aware of allegations of illegal logging by Royal Cambodian Armed Forces soldiers within protected community forests in Oddar Meanchey province and was looking into it. “I am following this case, but I haven’t received their petition yet,” ...

Cambodia’s government, facing growing protests by villagers and warnings about disappearing wilderness, suspended the granting of land to domestic and foreign companies on Monday in a move to curb forced evictions and illegal logging. Rights groups in the impoverished but resource-rich Southeast Asian country said the ...

Over the past half year, the military has established dozens of bases in protected community forests in Oddar Meanchey province and used them as an inroad for rampant illegal logging, villagers and forestry administration officials said yesterday. Nearly 2,000 villagers from local forest communities have thumbprinted ...

Tonle Sap fishermen and fisheries experts said yesterday that illegal fishing on the lake had increased substantially since Prime Minister Hun Sen cancelled commercial fishing lots in March and urged authorities to crack down on violators. The prime minister suspended commercial lots across the country last ...

Cambodia’s most outspoken activist against illegal logging was shot dead today while escorting journalists near a protected forest in Koh Kong province, where he has repeatedly attempted to expose illegal logging rackets that include military officials. Chut Wutty, the director of Natural Resource Protection Group, was ...

A dam project set to flood thousands of hectares of protected forest and displace about 1,500 indigenous minority villagers in one of Koh Kong province’s most precious ecosystems should be scrapped, opposition Sam Rainsy Party MP Son Chhay said yesterday. The 109-megawatt dam project in the ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday blasted local officials for not working hard enough to curb illegal fishing in and around the Tonle Sap lake, where fisheries crimes are still rampant despite 90,000 hectares of protected areas. “Don’t do illegal fishing, use illegal equipment to fish, or ...

The Japanese government sealed the deal yesterday on an agreement to provide Cambodia with a US$86 million loan for a project that will supply Siem Reap town residents with water from the Tonle Sap lake and alleviate their need for water drawn from wells. The 40-year ...

The Cambodian government has reclassified 12,000 hectares of wildlife sanctuary to make way for agro-industry concessions for three companies, according to the royal book issued on March 19. The land has been cut from the Kulen Promtep Wildlife Sanctuary, the largest protected area in Cambodia, which ...

Rangers paid by an internationally funded conservation organisation have been directly profiting for years from the very trade they are supposed to be preventing in southwest Cambodia, documents obtained by the Post allege. Former Conservation International (CI) staff members say when they spoke up about endemic ...

The government has already granted roughly 300,000 hectares in economic land concessions (ELC) so far this year, according to data released by a local rights group yesterday. The figure, which amounts to 40 percent of the total land concessions granted in all of 2011, has ...

Residents of an ethnic minority village in Mondolkiri’s Seima Protected Forest on Monday became the first community in the province to receive a communal land title, land management officials said yesterday. About 500 indigenous Bunong families from Andoung Kraloeng village in O’Reang district’s Sen Monorom commune ...

The government last month granted four companies a total 23,000 hectares of land concessions for agro-industry projects and a special economic zone (SEZ), according to human rights groups, which said it obtained the information from government documents. An additional 500 hectares inside a wildlife sanctuary were ...

A casino complex on top of Kampot province’s Bokor Mountain will open in less than two weeks – but environmental groups are strangely quiet about the effects the development, the size of a small city, could have on Cambodia’s natural heritage. The complex, in the Preah ...

The Forestry Administration’s proposal to create a conservation zone for Prey Long, one of Cambodia’s largest remaining primary forests, has been scaled down by more than 20 percent and now covers about 480,000 hectares, an official said. During consultation workshops in Phnom Penh last month, the ...

A man fled his home in Kratie province’s Snuol district after three men threatened to kill him for confiscating their chainsaws during a patrol against illegal logging, he told the Post yesterday. Village representative Chea Horn said he was scared to return home after the men ...

Faced with the rapid loss of vast tracts of forest across Cambodia, local communities have begun to fight back, and a growing number of villagers are now organizing their own aggressive forest patrols in order to save the forests on which they have relied for ...

Villagers from all five communes of Kratie province’s Snuol district began patrolling the Snuol Wildlife Sanctuary yesterday in a bid to protect the area from illegal loggers, in the second multiday crackdown undertaken by residents this year. ...