Forests and forestry
Forest protection
How protecting forests and their communities can prevent the next outbreak
Clear-cutting forests may provide short-term monetary gains, but the true costs of mass deforestation could be steep. The novel coronavirus that has caused the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is believed to be zoonotic, meaning it first spread from animals to humans. Not only is that a common ...
CAROLYN COWAN
Indigenous People Protest Over Farmland in Keo Seima Sanctuary
More than 200 indigenous people in Mondulkiri province’s Keo Seima district protested on Tuesday for access to farmland inside a wildlife sanctuary, which the Environment Ministry banned them from last month, citing conservation laws. Bun Nat, a representative of the protesters, said 250 ethnic minority Bunong ...
Khan Leakhena
COVID-19: Why saving our forests can help stop the next pandemic
Preventing the further destruction of Southeast Asia’s forests will be a critical step to stopping the spread of future deadly viruses similar to COVID-19, according to leading experts studying the risk factors that have contributed to the current global pandemic. Over the past four decades, swathes of ...
Jack Board
WWF researchers spot herd of wild elephants in Mondulkiri sanctuary
WWF-Cambodia says researchers had a close encounter with a herd of wild Asian elephants in Srepok Wildlife Sanctuary in Mondulkiri province which is a positive sign conservation efforts are working. A WWF-Cambodia statement on Friday said its researchers encountered the herd in mid-April, while they were ...
Sen David
As loggers exploit virus, Cambodian forest protectors defy state ban
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 ...
Matt Blomberg
Mondulkiri sanctuary land grabbers charged
In April, 13 suspects were charged in the Mondulkiri Provincial Court for encroaching on forest land in wildlife sanctuaries at Phnom Prich, Srepok, Nam Lear, and Keo Seima, said Ministry of Environment secretary of state and spokesperson Neth Pheaktra. The sanctuaries are protected under the Law ...
Soth Koemsoeun
Carbon credits up in forests
Minister of Environment Say Sam Al has urged relevant stakeholders to take part in protecting and conserving natural resources in wildlife sanctuaries. This, he said, will facilitate carbon credit sales to raise money to support local communities. Sam Al made his suggestion when he led experts ...
Soth Koemsoeun
2020 Northern Thailand forest fires snapshot
Situation As Thailand and the rest of the world continue to fight the COVID 19 pandemic, the North of Thailand is fighting a different battle. For over two months now provinces in the north have been blanketed by haze and smoke from ravaging forest fires. Forest fires ...
WWF-TH
Indigenous groups in Myanmar lash out at ‘restrictive’ conservation policies
In late 2018, following a series of demonstrations and confrontations, indigenous communities primarily from the Rawang ethnic minority expelled the Myanmar Forest Department and its international partner, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), from an area known as the Hkakaborazi Landscape, amid mounting dissent over a ...
Emily Fishbein
Researchers reconstruct drought variability from teak tree rings in Southern Myanmar
Teak (Tectona grandis) is a tropical, deciduous, broad-leaved tree species indigenous to Southeast Asia. Despite its high dendroclimatological potential, only a few studies have analyzed the relationships between teak ring-width and climate variability in Myanmar. In a study published in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers from Xishuangbanna Tropical ...
Zhang Nannan, Chinese Academy of Sciences