News
Forest Defenders under Fire in Cambodia
On Friday 5 February, Cambodian forest activist Ouch Leng, a Goldman Environmental Prize recipient, was arrested along with four others. They had been putting up ‘No Chainsaw’ signs and wrapping trees with blessed saffron robes in a section of the vast Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary ...
Various authors
Three Chinese charged over illegal logging linked to tycoon
Mondulkiri Provincial Court yesterday charged three Chinese nationals and is questioning a provincial environment department and two forestry administration officials over illegal logging activities linked to tycoon Soeng Sam Ol. Meas Pros, court spokesman, yesterday confirmed that the provincial court prosecutor charged the three Chinese nationals ...
Khy Sovuthy
Illegal Charcoal Trade Wrecks Myanmar’s Bulwark Against Cyclones
The depletion of mangroves in southern Myanmar is impacting local fisheries near the island villages and playing havoc with the mangrove forest that protect the coastline from extreme weather events. The illegal charcoal trade persists due to a lack of law enforcement and oversight in Myanmar ...
Wudan Yan
Prey Lang forest NGO in running for Yale prize
A member of the Prey Lang Community Network will travel to Connecticut in the United States this weekend after it was selected as one of only two finalists for Yale University’s International Society of Tropical Foresters Innovation Prize. The PLCN was nominated by the University of ...
Nickel and Dimed on frog mountain
Our motorbikes crossed flimsy bamboo bridges in western Sagaing Division, a landscape still showing the devastation of 2015’s floods. Shifting gears up a twisting, muddy hill trail took us over the border to Chin State. There, several villages are tucked into the forested slopes of ...
Phong Nha Heritage forest seriously damaged by loggers
Numerous precious timber planks chopped down by illegal loggers have been left on the ground, amid vast clearings in the Hoa Son forest. After one and half an hours of crossing steep mountains, reporters reached the timber-rich area of Hoa Son Forest in Minh Hoa district ...
New timber ban questioned

As of January, another of Cambodia’s highly traded varieties of rosewood will be protected by an international convention as an endangered species, but given past “dodgy trade”, observers are sceptical of how meaningful that protection will be. Demand from the Chinese market for Myanmarese rosewood ...
Laos, China agree to strengthen border security
Laos and China have reaffirmed their commitment to further strengthen cooperation in the maintenance of security along their shared border with the signing of a new agreement. The agreement was signed by the Head of the National Boundary Committee Office of the Ministry of Foreign ...
Myanmar's logging ban feeds shadow economy of illegal trade

Sitting in a shop on the riverfront in Mandalay just last week, Win Nyunt assessed whether it was safe to hide a ton of illegally logged teak in a nearby monastery at midnight. “If I put the logs in the monastery it is safer, but I ...
