Duncan wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2020 8:57 am Dam. I was hoping the Chinese would take control of it and build some hi-rise hotels around the edge. Everyone likes to have a unobstructed view of the water from their hotel accommodation don't they ?

Yes, I think this is exactly what the authorities have in mind when they speak of eco-tourism. They have taken over the running of the Yeak Loem protected area because the local people who were looking after it would never allow this sort of development. I've heard rumours that there is a plan to build a road around the lake. The next obvious step would be some highrise hotels and casinos on the waterfront, and probably an amusement park and some jetskis (because nature left alone is not very attractive for the sort of mass tourism that brings in the big money.)

My opinion only, going by previous experience of how things work here and what people have told me over the years.

Interesting article from Al-jazeera on how the Covid-19 pandemic is affecting the indigenous villages around Lake Yeak Loem.
Long read:
Cambodia’s Indigenous ecotourism weighed down by virus fears
Tourism has helped remote Indigenous communities improve their lives and protect the forests. COVID-19 has put both at risk.
By
Danielle Keeton-Olsen and
Roun Ry
3 May 2021
Banlung, Cambodia – When her two teenage daughters started going to high school three years ago, Thong Samai began selling traditional wine that she makes with herbs gathered from the forest to sell alongside soft drinks at the entrance of Yeak Laom, a sacred lake that has become a popular ecotourism destination in eastern Cambodia.

It is early March and the largest wave of COVID-19 to hit the country is just starting – although no one knows yet just how bad it will get – and Samai watches as a group of domestic tourists stream out of a bright white van, and walk past her stall on their way to the lake’s edge.

“They [tourists] are afraid to go near me, and I’m also afraid they could give me COVID, but I still take the risk to run the business,” she told Al Jazeera.

Making between 70,000 and 100,000 riels ($17.5 – $25) on a good day, 40-year-old Samai, part of the Indigenous Tompoun community that runs the lake, says the income from her stall helped ensure her daughters could continue going to school.

But earnings have dried up since the start of the pandemic and during this month’s Khmer New Year, Cambodia’s biggest holiday, the lake was closed completely.

The pandemic – escalating again in Cambodia and forcing lockdowns in Phnom Penh and other hotspots – has been a continuing strain for Indigenous communities in the country’s Ratanakiri province, for whom the additional income from their natural and spiritual landmarks is critical to their financial survival and the health of their forest home.

Cambodia’s Indigenous groups make up less than two percent of the population and mostly live in in the hilly and forested northeast provinces such as Ratanakiri.

But they are frequently pitted against agroindustrial companies with long-term leases that want to clear forests and plant commodity crops like rubber, encroaching onto the land that Indigenous people have tended for generations.

In the past, Indigenous communities used rotational agriculture and lived isolated from “lowland” Cambodians. But when outsiders began moving to Ratanakiri more than 20 years ago for the open land and job opportunities, Indigenous communities also began plantation-style farming and trying to earn income in other ways.

Ratanakiri province has lost nearly 30 percent of its tree cover – approximately 240,000 hectares (593,000 acres) – since 2000, and 43 percent of the loss was from primary forest, according to Global Forest Watch.

Many communities have come to regret the loss of the forests that mark their land.

They hoped ecotourism would provide them with a way not only to generate a little money but also to protect some of their remaining forest.
Full article: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/3 ... irus-fears

[CEO News: There was a recent post about some of the (indigenous) Tampoun villages near the lake being put into lockdown. Does anyone have more news on this ? ]

Covid may be a real dampener on the persistent resistance that is common in many of these communities - with long term implications.
It could be a real kneecapping in the ongoing power dynamics. You can be sure the jackals will be sniffing out for any vulnerabilities - that is what they do - and will move in for the kill when they can.

Maybe time to send a reporter up there, 'News.
Give them a bit of oxygen - and hope.
Or any intrepid reader who fancies themselves as a reporter...

Ps - on good Cambodian jackals