Deforestation drivers

A total of 36 rai of forest on Sankalakhiri mountain range in Chanae district of this southern province has been illegally cleared by encroachers, forest protection officials said. Acting on information from local villagers, Gen Jatuporn Kalampasut, director of the intelligence office of the Region 4 ...

Indigenous groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on Thursday dismissed a recent directive from Cambodia’s government ordering local authorities to end illegal logging, calling the move a “show” aimed at mending its reputation of being too soft on forest crimes. On June 19, Minister of Agriculture Veng ...

Myanmar’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation has disputed the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA)’s latest report which claims illegal teak from Myanmar is being shipped to Europe through the black market. “All the teak we export is legal,” U Kyaw Zaw Oo, the deputy ...

A surge in deforestation alerts from Cambodia’s Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary has raised fresh concerns over the role of a controversial timber firm in illegal logging. The 34,000-hectare (17,000 acre) Think Biotech concession was approved in 2012 under an agreement between Cambodia and South Korea aiming ...

It takes particularly cynical government officials to use the world’s focus on tackling COVID-19 to accelerate illegal logging of protected forests; simultaneously lining the pockets of business elites, attacking environmental activists, and sabotaging its own ability to fight the climate emergency. Yet this is exactly ...

With the illegal timber extraction rampant during coronavirus pandemic period in Sagaing Region, authorities are exerting greatest efforts and thus over 5,000 tonnes of illegal timbers were seized from October to April in this fiscal year 2019-2020, according to the Sagaing Region Forest Department. During the ...

A recent report by the Regional Community Forestry Training Centre (RECOFTC) said villagers living around Srepok Wildlife Sanctuary had recently reported illegal loggers in the forest and they took action by seizing some of the perpetrators’ chainsaws. The area is protected by the government and the ...

The Wildlife Alliance yesterday discovered over 200 hectares of mangrove forests within Koh Kong province’s Peam Krasaop Wildlife Sanctuary were illegally cleared. In a press release obtained yesterday, the wildlife and forest conservation NGO said the discovery of the forestry crime was made following a routine ...

A Cambodian conservation group has warned that logging in the protected Prey Lang forest has ramped up during the coronavirus pandemic, vowing it would continue to monitor the destruction despite government threats of legal action to stop that work. Members of the Prey Lang Community Network ...

While attention is focused on the coronavirus pandemic, we must also be alert to another fast-spreading hazard claiming lives — wildfires. Several people died this year fighting fires in northern Thailand. Now, hundreds of fires are burning there, in Laos and Myanmar. We expect more fires ...