News

Environment Ministry officials in Ratanakkiri province are hunting for timber traders who on Sunday set ablaze 300 logs of luxury wood in Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, one of several protected areas raided by Vietnamese loggers in recent months. ...

Some 200 hectares of forest in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary have been cleared and sold for up to $400 per hectare – allegedly with an official’s blessing – while an additional 700 hectares around the protected area face clearing. ...

More than 700 logs, many of them luxury timber, were discovered in Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary in Ratanikkiri province on Sunday, according to local military police, though the loggers were nowhere in sight. ...

Ratanakkiri provincial authorities have seized hundreds of logs and three trucks full of wood from the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary and are investigating the possible involvement of a nearby rubber plantation, officials said on Sunday.   ...

Almost nine years after Cambodia mandated the zoning of all protected areas to shield its most precious parts from development, the government finally zoned its first two sanctuaries last week, though some locals and conservationists doubt the effort will make much of a difference to ...

Environment Minister Say Sam Al on Friday pledged to protect the culture of Cambodia’s indigenous minorities, before going on to say that those groups need to learn to survive without relying on the forests they have depended on for centuries. ...

Environment officials in Ratanakkiri have over the past 10 days confiscated more than 500 pieces of valuable Sokrom wood found stockpiled throughout the province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary by illegal loggers, officials said Sunday. ...

About 100 villagers prevented a company from clearing part of its land concession in Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat district on Saturday in the latest confrontation in a long-running dispute in the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, according to a villager and a local official. ...

More than 100 cubic metres of luxury timber were found inside the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary near a Vietnamese-owned economic land concession on Saturday in Ratanakkiri province, according to Adhoc and a local resident, who suspect the timber was taken out of the protected area. Nearly ...

Environment Ministry officials on Thursday found a cache of more than 400 pieces of illegally logged first-grade wood in Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, which the ministry oversees, and suspect officers from a nearby military police base of being involved. Thin Ngoal, the sanctuary’s deputy director, ...

Representatives of an ethnic Tompoun community in Ratanakkiri province filed two separate complaints with local authorities last week accusing a group of five environment department officials of extortion after the officials allegedly caught the minority villagers trapping illegally in a wildlife sanctuary and asked for ...

A Vietnamese rubber plantation in Ratanakkiri province repeatedly accused of encroaching on the land of local residents agreed to stop demarcating more land Monday after being confronted by a group of villagers who accused the firm of breaching a deal the two sides reached earlier ...

More than 2,000 hectares of the decimated Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary in Ratanakkiri province have been classified by the Ministry of Environment (MOE) as the sanctuary’s first community protected area. Surrounded by three economic land concessions in Kon Mom district, the protected area is populated by a ...

More than 20 families working on a controversial palm oil plantation in Ratanakkiri province owned by the Hoang Anh Lumphat company have filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc accusing the owners of improperly withholding one month’s pay. Lor Sophal said he and another 22 families, ...

The burning of a bridge that provided access to the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary in Ratanakkiri is the handiwork of two oknhas and local environment officers, villagers have claimed. In a complaint to rights group Adhoc, members of the ethnic Lao community in Kon Mom district say ...

LUMPHAT WILDLIFE SANCTUARY, Ratanakkiri Province – From behind the corrugated metal walls of Daun Penh Agrico’s wood depot, the raspy buzz of a chainsaw rattled through the surrounding forest on Monday afternoon. As the chainsaw revved and cut, a heavy-duty truck packed full of long, sawn ...

Well-known timber magnate Try Pheap is preparing to expand cross-country with a scheme that already gives him exclusive rights to buy all the wood felled on economic land concessions (ELCs) in Ratanakkiri province, a spokesman for the businessman said. The Agriculture Ministry’s Forestry Administration in February ...

A district-level Environment Ministry official on Thursday retracted comments he made last week when he claimed proper monitoring of logging inside Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary was impossible because his ministry did not know the boundaries of private land concessions in the protected zone. On November ...

A private agro-industrial company has come under fire from villagers in Ratanakkiri province who say it has illegally felled resin-producing trees that are their main source of income. More than 1,000 trees in the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district are under threat, the villagers ...

Former Environment Minister Mok Mareth on Tuesday accused the media of having “twisted the truth” in reporting on illegal logging in Ratanakkiri province, where rights groups and independent forestry monitors say the natural environment is being pillaged and ethnic minority communities impoverished by illegal loggers ...

The Vietnamese Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) company, the majority shareholder of several economic land concessions in Ratanakkiri province, on Friday rebuffed accusations that it had logged forests and forced evictions, claiming that its activities improved the environment and the livelihoods of locals. Through several companies, ...

The Ministry of Environment on Thursday denied that a private agro-industry firm had been issued an “unofficial” land concession inside Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, as stated on Monday by the provincial governor. In response to claims by local officials that Daun Penh Agrico Co. Ltd. ...

A district-level Environment Ministry official in Ratanakkiri province on Wednesday claimed that he had no way to determine the legality of logging operations by firms with private land concessions inside the province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary. The claim by Chou Sopheak, director of Lumphat district’s environment department, ...

An “unofficial” land concession granted earlier this year to an agro-industry firm that has logged luxury hardwood in Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary is in violation of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s 2012 moratorium on new economic land concessions (ELCs), a government spokesman said Tuesday. Phay Siphan, ...