Forest activists, firm facing off once again

The Prey Lang Community Network yesterday delivered a letter to authorities in Kampong Thom province’s Sandan district calling for the postponement of a Vietnamese concessionaire’s forest clearing and notifying authorities of their intention to deliver a lawsuit to the provincial hall tomorrow, network activists said. According to the conservationist group, the lawsuit will be delivered by a 300-strong contingent that will march to the Sandan District Hall from the headquarters of CRCK Company, whose clearing, the group maintains, has spilled outside the bounds of its nearly 6,200-hectare rubber plantation concession, affecting forest lands used by the villagers for hunting and foraging and damaging villagers’ crops. … “We demand the immediate postponement of the clearing so that we can maintain Prey Lang in the future, or else it will be too late, and we also fall into a hard situation,” he said. … The clearing, he continued, occurred in Chhuk and Sapor Thom villages in Dang Kambet commune and had left only a small patch of forest, which villagers were not allowed to enter freely. …

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013021261309/National/forest-activists-firm-facing-off-once-again.html