Forests and forestry
Forest cover
Three resorts face encroachment counts in Thai national park
The Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation will file charges against three resort owners accused of forest land encroachment in Phu Rua district of this province. The resorts reportedly belong to state officials, including a retired senior forest official. Keep reading ...
Forest land-using projects required to plant new trees
Any projects using forest land in the future must include, once put forward for investment approval, a feasible report on the plan to plant new trees and to allocate a specific land fund, said Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai. During an online conference of the ...
Vietnamese arrested in Mondolkiri smuggling timber
Two Vietnamese nationals were arrested in Cambodia’s Mondolkiri province as they attempted to cross the border back into Vietnam on 8 October in a tour bus loaded with high-grade timber, authorities said 11 October. Keep reading ...
Laos faces the unknown as elephants walk from logging into tourism
Walk down any street in Luang Prabang, Laos, and you will be presented with any number of opportunities to interact with elephants. Some are more ethical than others. Indeed, at the Elephant Village, 15 kilometres outside town, the motto is: “Saving elephants is our mission.” Keep reading ...
Rights group asks for land data sharing
Rights group Licadho has called on the government to make available statistics on the full extent of economic land concessions in response to data collected by the organisation over five years. Keep reading ...
Report finds economic land concessions affected 17K families
Community representatives, civil society organisations and opposition members have urged the government for more urgent action to resolve land disputes following the release of annual data showing that all 24 provinces were affected in 2014, with hundreds of cases still unresolved. The call came at the launch ...
Lao officials fail to enforce government ban on timber exports
A recent ban on the export of raw logs imposed by the Lao government to increase the value of processed wood products is not being enforced in the country’s southern provinces because some national leaders are involved in timber smuggling, a civil society official with ...
Vietnamese rubber giant makes deal with Cambodian villagers
A “major breakthrough” has been reached in discussions between Vietnamese rubber giant Hoang Anh Gia Lai and 11 indigenous communities in Ratanakkiri province that have lost land and resources to the company’s plantations. During a three-day meeting with community representatives, NGOs and its own subsidiaries, the ...
Myanmar-China illegal timber trade still thriving: report
Timber extracted from Myanmar’s frontier forests is flowing into China in illegal transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to a report published on 17 September. The research, by the UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and partly financed by the UK, the European ...
Military police seize vehicle with army plates, rosewood
Military police in Kompong Chhnang province said they found 290 kg of rosewood in the back of an SUV with military license plates on 14 September but failed to apprehend the driver, who escaped in a car that had been following his. Keep reading ...
