A conservation organization recorded sharp declines in banteng, gaur and other species of land-dwelling hooved mammals in Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary over a 10-year biodiversity study, suggesting four animals are at risk of disappearing from the protected area within a few years — like tigers and wild water buffalo before them.
A Phnom Penh deputy governor was among authorities who harassed rights monitors and journalists, threatening to confiscate their cameras and phones, at a small opposition rally outside the Chinese Embassy on Friday, with a media advocate calling the authorities’ actions “unacceptable intimidation.”
Chea Seila is one of the few conservationists who spends the months of listening needed to earn locals’ trust, villagers and colleagues say. For her, it’s the communities, with deep wells of knowledge, who are critical to protecting Stung Treng’s wetlands.
UPDATED 7:55 a.m. — Din Varin, 48, was smashed in the head with a brick on Monday morning outside a Phnom Penh market and rushed to the hospital. One day after the attack, nearby vendors said they were still shocked, saying they knew the organic vegetable vendor as a gentle and quiet seller but knew nothing of alleged political activities.
More than 1,400 female and juvenile prisoners have been evacuated from Prey Sar Prison’s Correctional Center 2 and squeezed into Phnom Penh’s other overcrowded prisons amid flooding over the past two weeks, officials said on Tuesday.
In Stung Treng, villagers are experiencing unexpected changes to their environment: disappearing fish, dying forests, eroding islands. As they grapple with changing natural cycles, they project their fears onto the giant Don Sahong dam that looms upstream.
Banteay Meanchey province has recorded at least 14 deaths out of the country’s 25 total flood fatalities, with authorities blaming an upstream dam in Thailand for the extra damage.
Heavy rain warnings remain in place after more than a week of flooding, leaving rice farmers increasingly anxious about their harvests — the longer their fields are flooded, the more likely their crops will be lost.
With more heavy rainfall expected this weekend and ongoing flooding that has killed at least 21 people this month, Prime Minister Hun Sen cast doubt that the in-filling of capital lakes had contributed to severe flooding in Phnom Penh.
As the country continues to be inundated by heavy rain and flooding, a man grapples with the death of his wife, which has not been counted among the 12 official deaths from the past week’s storms.
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