Local Forest Patrols Challenge Illegal Logging

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 generations. Since last year, villagers have been patrolling, seizing logging equipment and confronting loggers, and are continuing to do so in Prey Long forest, and Kratie and Mondolkiri provinces, local activists and NGO workers said yesterday. On Tuesday, a group of about 60 indigenous Banong and Stieng minority villagers in Kratie’s Snuol district confiscated three chainsaws and hundreds of cubic meters of timber in a community forest and in Snuol Wildlife Sanctuary, said San Siyan, a representative of the villagers. “We saw a lot of workers employed to cut logs…. But we were able to seize three chainsaws and detained eight workers for one hour, while dozens of loggers fled away,” Mr. Siyan said, adding that villagers informed the local Forestry Administration of the timber haul and let the loggers go after giving them a warning. … Chut Wutty, director of the Natural Resources Protection Group, which supports the Prey Long campaign, said villagers were implementing existing forest protection laws that go unenforced by authorities. “If they don’t do it by themselves, they will lose everything,” he said. “The government doesn’t implement the law, and so now the local people implement it.”…