Blind eye to forest’s plight

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 corruption that was facilitating the illegal logging of the Central Cardamom Protected Forest (CCPF), which stretches across three provinces, they were fired for doing so. Written complaints from the chief of a community management committee in the CCPF backed by CI detail how luxury timber confiscated by officials on the organisation’s payroll simply “disappeared”, and did so systematically. A “bribe book” photographed by sacked former staff member Thap Savy, allegedly shows how CI-supported Forestry Administration and military police officials [rangers] made a lucrative business out of “conservation”. “I saw CI took the money from the illegal loggers. I came to talk personally and complain to the CI director [Seng Bunra], that’s why I was sacked,” he said. The 401,310-hectare Central Cardamom Protected Forest is lauded by Conservation International as one of the best-protected forests in Cambodia, free of any large-scale illegal logging. But former staff, conservationists and the people living there say the forest is being decimated by the illicit timber trade, which has been active since 2009. CI senior vice-president David Emmett simply denies that large-scale illegal rosewood logging takes place at all inside the CCPF. “This illegal logging of rosewood is not large-scale in the CCPF and CI is not profiting, engaging or supporting this threat,” he said in an email last year. Significant quantities of the luxury timber did not even exist in the protected forest area and illegal logging was isolated to a small number of individuals that were not collaborating with companies in the area, the email said. These claims have been systematically discredited by photographic evidence obtained from CI’s own reports, the accounts of former staff and consultants, as well as those of villagers who live inside the area. Conservationists have valued the illicit trade in the CCPF at tens of millions of dollars per year and on three occasions the Post has witnessed the illegal rosewood trade in the area first hand. On each occasion, from December 2011 to March 2012, military and police officials have attempted to intimidate journalists and gone to lengths to stop the Post from obtaining information, going so far as to set up a road block in an attempt to prevent pictures of the logging from getting out. CI country director Seng Bunra told the Post last week that his organisation is now planning to investigate the allegations. “We are deeply concerned about the alleged illegal harvesting of wood in the CCPF and alleged illegal behaviour by those charged with its protection. We are willing to support an independent investigation into these allegations,” he said by email. Seng Bunra said alleged offenders were not employees of CI but Forestry Administration rangers; however, he acknowledged his organisation “provide sub-grants” to the FA “and monitor progress on agreed tasks and deliverables on a monthly basis”. Any cases of FA misconduct are reported to the FA’s administration, he said. Gordon Claridge is a natural resource management specialist with more than 20 years experience who worked for CI in 2005 evaluating law enforcement effectiveness in protected forests including the CCPF. He said that rather than blurring the lines of responsibility in their project areas, CI should have investigated allegations of misconduct when they were first raised. “What he [David Emmett] really denied was that CI knew anything about it or had any role in law enforcement,” he said. “I think that was the worst thing he could do, because everyone working in conservation in Cambodia knows there is a certain amount of illegal logging going on in all good-quality forests.” Another conservation group – Wildlife Alliance – has said that large-scale illegal logging of rosewood, called krunyung in Khmer, is rampant all over southwest Cambodia. Executive director Suwanna Gauntlett describes the fierce competition between illegal timber dealers to log rosewood in the CI project area in the northern CCPF – O’Som commune in Pursat province’s Veal Veng district – as “total anarchy”. The trade was so destructive that it became known as “the krunyung wars”, she said. …

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