Community patrollers of the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary say local authorities are pushing them to sign contracts that they cannot patrol the forest, a year after they were banned from activities to monitor the protected area.
The Cambodian Youth Network says it was denied permission to patrol the Preah Roka Wildlife Sanctuary in Preah Vihear province over the weekend with a local community that reported the transport of sawn timber from the protected area.
A provincial land management department director — formerly of Stung Treng, currently of Ratanakiri — has been charged with the forgery of public documents for allegedly issuing certificates to clear 77 plots of forestry land.
Villagers occupying state land on a Mekong river island in Phnom Penh’s Chbar Ampov district are refusing to back down amid confrontations and negotiations with authorities, pointing to nearby mansions and land claimed by a senator and police chief who aren’t getting similarly harassed.
The Environment Ministry is studying whether to hand 272 hectares of a biodiversity conservation corridor in Mondulkiri province to the CEO of borey developer Peng Huoth.
An under-investigation military general and a Defense Ministry official are battling in court over a plot of land in Phnom Penh that the official allegedly acquired through a proxy to sell to a ruling party lawmaker despite it already belonging to the general.
An award-winning environmentalist detained over the weekend said upon his release that he had seen about 100 tractors carting wood away from the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary — a claim rejected by local environment authorities and a nearby reforestation project as lacking in evidence.
Volunteer community patrollers along the Mekong aim to stop a rise in illegal electric fishing, which harms river ecosystems and livelihoods that rely on protected fisheries. But the sale of outlawed gear allows the dangerous practice to continue.
Five detained forestry activists, including Goldman Prize-winning Ouch Leng, were released on Monday morning after days of questioning. A local villager told of entering the Prey Lang sanctuary with the group on Friday to put up banners saying “Please preserve our forests.”
A company with powerful shareholders is creating a new coastline in Ream by pouring an estimated 100 million tons of sand into the Gulf of Thailand. After a year of filling, company and government officials say they’re still in the process of assessing potential environmental and social impacts.
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