Barang chgout wrote: ↑Sat Apr 28, 2018 12:22 pm

Felgerkarb wrote:No. Next question.

No, What? Directed at me? Unsure of battlestar galactic phrasing.

Sent from my SM-G570Y using Tapatalk

Directed at the OP.

Felgerkarb wrote:

Barang chgout wrote: ↑Sat Apr 28, 2018 12:22 pm

Felgerkarb wrote:No. Next question.

No, What? Directed at me? Unsure of battlestar galactic phrasing.

Sent from my SM-G570Y using Tapatalk

Directed at the OP.

120% agree.

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No amount of US forest service training is going to help a Cambodian park ranger win a shootout with border troops, the local police force, or whatever deep pocketed loggers and poachers are out there. Maybe to nab a local trophy lass now and then, but the plunder will continue.

Oops forgot. There is no more illegal logging. Official government pronouncement a while back.

The US seems to revel in throwing good money after bad...training people to combat illegal loggers, LOL

Hey, but look how we're doing in Afghanistan!

A total waste of time and money...and lives of Khmer rangers, who will be guinea pigs.

ASEAN SMART Patrol, a hope for the region’s forests
Aug 17. 2019
By Piyaporn Wongruang
The Nation
As a park chief himself, Soeung Khemarak, the deputy director of the Oyadav National Park in Rattanakiri province, fully understands the problems faced by Cambodia’s Kulen Prum Tep Wildlife Sanctuary and adjacent parks near the border with Thailand where bombs, illegal logging and poaching are part of daily life.

The situation is similar further inland in Srepok Wildlife Sanctuary, a last bastion for Cambodia’s tigers and to which the big cats are about to be reintroduced to replenish the population.

Khemarak has long hoped that these threats to Cambodia’s forests could be offset if Thai and Cambodian park rangers were to jointly patrol the protected areas close to the border, but has yet to see such cooperation become a reality.

What is more feasible, he says, is the SMART Patrol System, a photo-based technology that uses NCAPS (Network Centric Anti-Poaching System) to patrol the parks.

“I saw them using camera traps to capture tigers and their migration. And they used them to take photos of poachers too, and linked them to the internet. This is not just about getting the materials, but the way you train rangers in using these technologies,” he said.

“In my province, we don’t have advanced technology like that. We started to learn about SMART Patrol System a few years ago and we know that it can help collect data and be applied to our decision making, which is important. If we had cameras like that, they would help a lot. Some non-profit organisations may be of help or perhaps I can find alternative materials. If not, we will have to stick to the old way, dispatching our men to chase the poachers,” Khemarak 39, told The Nation on the sidelines of the International Conference on Strengthening of SMART Patrol System in ASEAN held early this month.

Khemarak was one of the 70 high-ranking officials and park chiefs from 8 Asean countries, who along with observers from international conservation organisations, were invited by Thailand to participate in the conference, the first time that high-ranking officials had come together to discuss protection for Asean forests through the SMART Patrol System.

The participants also looked at possible cooperation in this era of heightened trans-boundary threats.

The SMART Patrol System has been around for about a decade though its results were nowhere as efficient as they are today. Using well-planned patrols, geographical technology like GPS and systematic recordings of forest resources and wildlife as well as the threats to them, facts and information from the field are systematically collected then processed and analysed.

This creates a large database of the problems and threats to protected areas and suggests appropriate planning and management, sophisticated forest protection and supportive law enforcement systems against forest and wildlife crimes.
Full article: https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30374900

It is not the local charcoal burning that is fueling the majority of Cambodia's deforestation, however, now that there is less wood available for household cooking, so could burning agricultural waste be a way forward ?

The Mekong region is projected to lose another third of its forest cover by 2030 at current rates of deforestation.
by Lauren Crothers on 28 August 2019
Mongabay Series: Global Forests

Briquettes made from rice husks or other plant waste present a cleaner alternative to wood and charcoal in a region that collectively produces nearly 100 million tons of rice per year.
In Myanmar, biomass from agricultural waste is being used to power small home appliances and even entire villages.

The Mekong region’s hunger for coal and other fossil fuels is growing, and millions still burn wood to make charcoal for cooking.

In 2013, it emerged that a third of the forest cover across all five countries in the region had been lost. With continued deforestation, the region is expected to lose another third by 2030, according to a 2018 WWF report.

According to a 2015 Global Forest Watch report, the rising rate of tree cover loss in the Mekong region was driven largely by logging, the construction of dams and the clearance of forest for the cultivation of commercial crops.

In Cambodia alone, data released by NASA in 2017 showed that only 3 percent of the country still had primary forest coverage, and that 1.59 million hectares (3.9 million acres) of tree cover were lost between 2001 and 2014. Most of the timber that is illegally felled in Cambodia ends up passing through Vietnam, which itself lost 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres) of forest cover between 2010 and 2015.

With so many crops already grown in the region, and assuming that no forest is cleared for further biomass or biofuel production, the rice-husk briquette industry could have a positive impact on the environment.

The Mekong countries of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam collectively produced approximately 98 million tons of rice last year, according to FAO figures, meaning the potential for rice husks and straw for use as biomass is sizeable; not to mention by-products from other crops such as maize, corn and cassava.

A 2015 report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) looked at renewable energy potential in these five countries, finding that the biomass or biofuel potential was “considerable, reflecting the importance of the agriculture sector for all countries in the region.”

In Cambodia, for instance, using rice wastage could save people from high electricity prices, the ADB said.

“The predominance of rice production in Cambodia contributes to the high availability of rice residues, such as rice husk and rice straw,” the report said. “These residues could be an option for a variety of biomass energy systems.”
Full article: https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/in-th ... take-hold/