Forests and forestry
Forest protection
Elephants' migration to village brings new stress
A thousand elephants threatened by starvation have journeyed through the hills of northern Thailand, making a slow migration home from tourist sites forced shut by the pandemic. Home for some of the animals is the northern village of Huay Pakoot, where generations of ethnic Karen mahouts ...
AFP
New study shows loss of Southeast Asia’s peat forests drives climate change
A new study by researchers in Singapore from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) uses satellite data to show just how rapidly Southeast Asia’s vital peat forests are being cleared, drained and dried out. The paper, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, uses remote sensing to document how peatlands ...
Skylar Lindsay
Myanmar’s mangrove forests are in grave peril
Mangrove forests are under threat across Southeast Asia and in the country of Myanmar alone more than 60% of them were lost within just two decades between 1996 and 2016, according to researchers at the National University of Singapore. “Mangroves are one of the world’s most ...
Stop grabbing forest land
The Siem Reap provincial Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries called on citizens to stop stealing forest land belonging to the state. It said village, commune and district authorities should cooperate to protect forest land in the province. Department director Tea Kimsoth told The Post on ...
Voun Dara
Transnational trust trumps trafficking
Early on the morning of January 8, a team from the Wildlife Inspection Unit in Chiang Kong, Chiang Rai province, Thailand, was conducting a search at the Bann Jam Pong morning market. They had been sent there by Wachirayut Kietthibudr, head of the Wildlife Inspection ...
MIA SIGNS
Cambodian firm accused of creating a ‘monopoly in the timber business’
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 ...
DANIELLE KEETON-OLSEN
Campaigners in Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region oppose $21m conservation project
Campaigners in the Tanintharyi region of southern Myanmar have urged international donors to support community conservation efforts, rather than what they see as a top-down approach that excludes indigenous groups. Supporters of the Conservation Alliance of Tanintharyi (CAT) are opposing a $21 million development project, called Ridge ...
Daniel Quinlan
Threats against Cambodian Forest Defenders Escalate Amid COVID-19
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 ...
Community Forests to be upgraded for food security in the Deep South
The Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center (SBPAC) is joining hands with the Royal Forest Department and other relevant agencies in rehabilitating and upgrading community forests in the Deep South in order to generate employment and income for local residents. SBPAC Secretary-General Rear Admiral Somkiat Pholprayoon said ...
WWF expresses sorrow over loss of globally endangered wildlife
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) shared its sadness over the loss of two adult female Banteng in Northeastern part of Cambodia, according to its statement released recently. The two Banteng are believed to have been shot dead a few days inside Phnom Prich Wildlife ...