A logging free-for-all
The scale of mass logging in once-dense woodlands in Cambodia’s north now more closely resembles the free-for-all of a gold rush than the sustainable forestry more often associated with these communities. With the financial backing of powerful businessmen, villagers in three districts of Preah Vihear are clear-felling at will, transporting the logs on homemade tractors to their houses, ready for Try Pheap’s MDS Import Export Co Ltd to carry them to the border with Vietnam. Pheap has a licence to collect and transport timber impounded by Forestry Administration officials in the province and logs cleared from economic land concessions. But the licence does not permit his company to pay villagers to log in community forests. … Logging has intensified in Cambodia over the past five years, according to several recent studies. Satellite data from NASA analysed by Open Development Cambodia in December last year estimated that about a third of the country’s total forest cover has been lost since 1973. The figure is likely higher, as it includes cash crop plantations such as rubber. …
May Titthara
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/logging-free-all
