Forests and forestry

When scientists described the Popa langur (Trachypithecus popa) as a species new to science in 2020, it was already staring extinction in the face. Fewer than 260 of the fluffy gray leaf-eating monkeys are estimated to remain across four precariously isolated patches of forest on Myanmar’s central ...

The spots on the back of the large-antlered muntjac may have given it away as a fawn, but the photo of the deer suckling from its mother served as confirmation. Photographs of the moment are the first known images of a large-antlered muntjac fawn in Cambodia. ...

A local community in Oddar Meanchey province is doing an online “one-dollar” campaign to raise funds for forest protection after facing personnel shortfalls for their patrolling, leaving much of the Sorng Rukhavorn Wildlife Sanctuary’s more than 30,000ha unprotected. The Sorng Rukhavorn forest community said forestry crimes ...

In January 2020, filmmaker Sean Gallagher traveled to Cambodia with a camera, drone, and a mission: to create a film revealing the impacts of deforestation. Riding on the backs of motorbikes driven by local activists, Gallagher spent several weeks venturing deep into protected forests in ...

Over the past decade, the European Union entered into collaborative agreements with tropical timber-producing countries to fight forest crime and verify the legality of wood imported into the EU. Within the Greater Mekong, Vietnam was the first (and to date, only) country to sign such a voluntary ...

Myanmar’s rainforests, home to the endangered Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus), critically endangered Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) and endangered lar gibbon (Hylobates lar), are some of the most biodiverse in the world. But the relative flatness of the terrain, and the valuable timber species found here, ...

We were seated near a lush river in the Southern Cardamom Mountains, huddled over a lunch of chicken and rice, when the tip came in via text message: Someone had passed along the location of a poaching camp. Within minutes, the entire group — including Darian ...

After forests are logged, felled trees are typically sent to sawmills, where they’re processed into boards, or lumber. It’s in this processed form that wood typically enters the international commodity supply chain. But not all lumber is created equal. In the Greater Mekong region, high-quality hardwoods ...

Thailand’s supreme court has sentenced construction tycoon Premchai Karnasuta to two and a half years in prison without probation on charges related to the poaching of protected animals, a prosecutor told Reuters news agency. Premchai, president of Thai construction company Italian-Thai Development, was found guilty on ...

A drone camera soars over a timber yard where thousands of tons of logs are strewn across the ground. In one clip, a bulldozer scoops up a heap of wood while black smoke billows out of its exhaust pipe. In another, workers load wood onto ...