Cry of Alarm: Cambodia's Prey Lang Wildlife Santuary is being 'Gutted'

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Re: Cry of Alarm: Cambodia's Prey Lang Wildlife Santuary is being 'Gutted'

Post by Kahuna »

Not wanting to divert the main topic but AndyKK provided the photos of the bikes and cars (reminded me of American Pickers) confiscated from the illegal loggers and associates so why instead of them being left to rot could they not be put to a better use? For instance surely at least a few cars and bikes would be worth to restore and sold on. The funds from the sale could then be put to more conservation efforts (okay I know that probably wouldn't happen and a government official would be getting at least a part share) but you could achieve a few things; one no more environmental damage from leaking fluids (break, oil and petrol) from the vehicles into the soil where they sit, you give some kids and adults a chance to learn at the very least basic mechanical skills including engine maintenance, panel beating, motor electrician skills and upholstery and make a few dollars when it is time to sell them and they in turn can further their skills and hopefully gain employment.
As for the main topic I'm afraid the slash and burn mentality of many farmers along with the greed of the loggers will never be fully eradicated but at least there are some groups trying to make a difference but unless the support comes from the upper echelons of governments both in Cambodia and abroad then it will always be an uphill battle which will not stop until there is not enough natural forest so as to make it too expensive to log.
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Re: Cry of Alarm: Cambodia's Prey Lang Wildlife Santuary is being 'Gutted'

Post by SternAAlbifrons »

Wildlife Alliance has a longstanding policy of displaying every single motor bike, vehicle and boat that has been confiscated in very public places to slowly rot before everybody's eyes.
Probably Andy's photo's ^^ are of one of their "display yards".

'powerful message.
Added bonus, everybody also gets to understand that WA are clean. ^^^ full view transparency in the accounting.
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Re: Cry of Alarm: Cambodia's Prey Lang Wildlife Santuary is being 'Gutted'

Post by AndyKK »

Money! Simple answer (personal view) inderviduals can not come and steal timbers from the forest, it will be against the law. Also the rate the trees are being cut at Prey Lang is nether a small operation, with so many chainsaws buzzing away and trucks transporting, it would not be difficult for the appropriate authorities to miss the activity going on. I seem to recall a staitment given sometime ago about Cambodia being criticised for destruction of it's forests, I forget who replied, but the words where that other countries destroyed there own forests long ago.
It's also true of today that major world companies are on the carbon footprint, usually by having investment or donation and
that of sponsership of some ways, ending in them having a better carbon foot by sreeding or offseting some of their numbers, example would be a large oil company.
Mentioning organisations such has Wildlife Alliance, yes I agree they do good in there work, but I would not like to guess or comment on what position or policy they actually have with the government, I doubt that they would say or do anything to upset their own position.
Like ourselves, we all have our opinion on the subject, but we are here has guests of the country, and also have no right to talk or take any action has being a foreigner in someone's else's land.
Always "hope" but never "expect".
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Re: Cry of Alarm: Cambodia's Prey Lang Wildlife Santuary is being 'Gutted'

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

EU report reveals resurgence in Prey Lang deforestation
12 January 2021 9:04 AM
Khuon Narim
Image
Members of the PLCN patrol the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary in December 2020, with a new report showing a recent increase in deforestation.

A European Commission report showed a resurgence in deforestation at the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, after reaching peak forest canopy loss in 2016 when the forest was given protected status.

The Joint Research Centre of the EU Commission published a new report illegal logging Prey Lang using high-resolution satellite imagery and data from the Prey Lang Community Network that patrols the fast-disappearing forestland.

The report found that canopy loss started increasing in 2013 and peaked in 2016 when 9,836 hectares of forest were lost. While the loss of forest cover dropped in 2017, it has been showing a steady upward trend, with 4,230 hectares lost in 2019.

Satellite images show that the northern and southern parts of Prey Lang were witnessing the large-scale loss of forest cover, but interior sections of the sanctuary had selective logging, where single trees were felled. PLCN GPS patrolling locations correspond with both large and single removal of trees.

“[W]hile the central parts of Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary are mainly affected by the selective removal of single trees, the conversion of larger forest patches of non-forested areas are mainly found in the northern and southern parts of the Sanctuary,” reads the report.

The report found that its data largely corresponded with findings from the University of Maryland’s Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) dataset, which monitors deforestation globally.

The university found that in 2016 forest cover loss was around 11,000 hectares, higher than the new report’s estimate. It was the same for deforestation in 2019, where GLAD found that 7,510 hectares of forest were lost.

Cambodia has seen some of the fastest deforestation rates globally, on account of the government handing over large tracts of land to private agribusinesses for economic land concessions. More recently, state land was given to private interests for housing, tourism and infrastructure projects.

Hoeun Sopheap, a representative for the Prey Lang Community Network in Kampong Thom province, said the report’s findings matched the observations of the group’s patrolling activities.

He said the Environment Ministry was in denial of the group’s findings that illegal logging was conducted in collusion with local authorities.
https://cambojanews.com/eu-report-revea ... restation/
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Re: Cry of Alarm: Cambodia's Prey Lang Wildlife Santuary is being 'Gutted'

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

Long read.
Cambodia’s Prey Lang: how not to protect a vital forest
By Richard Pearshouse
13 April 2021, 16:13 UTC

By any metric, Cambodia’s Prey Lang forest is vitally important. A biodiversity hotspot, it spans approximately 500,000 hectares of diverse types of forest teeming with animals, insects and birds, including endangered species, and provides resin tapping and other sources of livelihood for many of the Indigenous Kuy People living within or adjacent to the sanctuary.

As the largest lowland rainforest in mainland Southeast Asia, Prey Lang also plays a key role in absorbing carbon from the atmosphere and is a crucial source of water for Cambodia. The government designated much of the forest as a protected Wildlife Sanctuary in 2016.

In February 2020, Ministry of Environment rangers blocked hundreds of community members, monks and environmental activists from entering the protected area to conduct an annual tree-blessing ceremony to promote conservation.

The event was organized by the Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN), most of whose members are Indigenous Kuy. Prey Lang is a central part of the Kuy people’s livelihood, culture and spirituality – to the extent that “Prey Lang” literally means “our forest” in the Kuy language.

Since then, PLCN members have been prohibited from entering their forest, with the government asserting that the group is operating illegally. Previously the group’s volunteers played a crucial role in patrolling the protected area and reporting instances of illegal logging. But during 2020 PLCN members have had to watch on as convoys of trucks pass ranger stations on their way out of the forest, piled high with lumber illegally harvested from freshly felled trees.

The related cultural losses for the Kuy are immeasurable, but we can now quantify the environmental cost of the restrictions on PLCN. Recent data published by the University of Maryland in partnership with Global Forest Watch show that over 9,000 hectares of forest was lost during 2020. Twenty percent more trees were lost in 2020 than 2019. So far this year, deforestation in Prey Lang remains out of control. The same institutions registered 16,991 deforestation alerts during the first week of March alone.

Meanwhile the pressure on PLCN has been unrelenting. In early February this year, Ministry of Environment officers arrested and arbitrarily detained five environmental defenders for investigating illegal logging in Prey Lang. They were only released three days later, after signing a document committing to refrain from entering the sanctuary without permission from the Ministry of Environment.

The Ministry frequently asserts without evidence that large-scale illegal logging operations in Prey Lang and other protected areas have been eradicated and any residual illegal logging in Prey Lang is carried out by local villagers only.

But the scale of this deforestation strongly suggests it’s sustained by larger commercial operations. The recently published satellite data from University of Maryland and Global Forest Watch show a concerning increase in the rate of selective cutting in specific areas.

Full article: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/ ... al-forest/
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Re: Cry of Alarm: Cambodia's Prey Lang Wildlife Santuary is being 'Gutted'

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

What Next for U.S. Engagement on Cambodia’s Protected Forests?
August 23, 2021 By Richard Pearshouse

Cambodia’s lush Prey Lang rainforest is abundant with animals, insects and birds, including endangered species, and diverse types of forests. It also provides resin tapping and other sources of livelihood for some 250,000 people, many of whom are Indigenous Kuy, living within or adjacent to the forest.

In 2016, the Cambodian government designated much of the forest—the largest lowland rainforest in mainland Southeast Asia at approximately 430,000 hectares—as a protected Wildlife Sanctuary.

The United States has also long appreciated the significance of Prey Lang, and in 2019, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) undertook an ambitious $21 million partnership with Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment aimed at protecting the forest.

The project was met with skepticism by local activists, however, who viewed the Ministry of Environment as an enabler—even a profiteer—of illegal logging in the forest.

Today, deforestation in the area is out of control and the pressures on Prey Lang are immense.
https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2021/08 ... d-forests/
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Re: Cry of Alarm: Cambodia's Prey Lang Wildlife Santuary is being 'Gutted'

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

Prey Lang, Prey Preah Roka Monitors Suppressed While Tree Cover Vanishes: Report
5 min read
Danielle Keeton-Olsen
| Thu Jan 27, 2022 11:33 am

Forest watchers in 2020 filed 90 percent fewer reports of illegal logging amid officials’ threats against community patrols, according to an international research report, as one advocate said young people were refraining from joining patrols out of fear of repercussions.

Using a combination of satellite data and alerts from community forest patrollers, the report by a coalition of local NGOs and European institutions said Prey Lang in 2020 suffered the greatest tree cover loss by percentage in the two decades studied.

Three wildlife sanctuaries in Cambodia’s northern landscape — Prey Lang, Prey Preah Roka and Sorng Roka Vorn — lost a combined 10,000 hectares of forest between 2001 and 2020, according to the report, with both Prey Lang and Prey Preah Roka seeing 80 percent of that loss come within the last five years. The report follows up on 2020 forest loss and canopy disturbances data published by satellite imagery service Global Forest Watch.

Monitors on the ground in the Prey Lang extended landscape are being increasingly threatened, said Ida Theilade, a Denmark-based researcher and co-author on the report.

The report found that community patrollers in Prey Lang submitted 90 percent fewer reports of logging, transportation and other environmental threats in 2020 than they had in 2019, while Prey Preah Roka observers submitted 88 percent fewer entries to a data collection app that allows researchers to observe and analyze illegal logging in the sanctuaries. The report attributed those data points to restrictions around the Covid-19 pandemic, and a ban by the Environment Ministry on community forest patrols.

Theilade said the app also has a feature to track threats reported by forest patrollers, and she has observed an increase in threats reported by app users. The threats come from both authorities and private security guards employed by logging operations, she said.

“We see an increase in the number and severity of the threats to the community patrol members. This includes threats to property, family members, threats of arrests by authorities and [threats of] killings,” she said.

She told VOD that the data were collected from a total 100 smartphones submitting on-the-ground reports from the two wildlife sanctuaries, and she did not know how many total patrollers were participating in these community patrols because there will usually a small group will use one of the smartphones, many of which were supplied by the NGO coalition. Theilade added that there was a high turnover rate of patrollers, but that’s because community patrolling is a voluntary, time-consuming and strenuous activity.

When he goes into the forest to monitor forests and work with young provincial residents, Heng Kimhong, an advocacy officer at Cambodian Youth Network, meets those who live in and around the forests. They tell him they are finding evidence of logging everywhere, especially after community patrols were effectively banned in 2020, Kimhong said.

“We know as well that the ministry and government do not allow [patrols], but the local community, they live inside the protected areas,” he said. “Wherever [we go] in the protected area, we can find the logging cases.”

Environment Ministry spokesperson Neth Pheaktra said he was “not concerned about it at all” when asked if ministry crackdowns had discouraged young people from participating in environmental protection.
In full: https://vodenglish.news/prey-lang-prey- ... es-report/
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Re: Cry of Alarm: Cambodia's Prey Lang Wildlife Santuary is being 'Gutted'

Post by truffledog »

the governments has got the guns..bye bye Prey Lang
work is for people who cant find truffles
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Re: Cry of Alarm: Cambodia's Prey Lang Wildlife Santuary is being 'Gutted'

Post by SternAAlbifrons »

^^^
Or we could keep giving the locals support and encouragement instead of just writing it all off.

Sorry Truff, i know you value the natural world, but deafeatism is an insidious pox imo. It needs challenging in this battlefield as much as it does in any war.
'Fact is, all over the world, including here, people are continuing the struggle - and the planet and you and me are all a better place for it.

Turn our back and walk away - and see how much worse it gets.
Give up - and see the push for community empowerment everywhere wither.
Sure, things are getting worse, but that is the very point of not giving in.

Saved V. Lost, is a false dichotomy anyway, when you are talking about a patch of bush or the planet Earth.
Black pessimism is as incorrect an assessment about the state of the planet, and Prey Lang, as starry-eyed pink dolphin optimism.

Image
forest spirits the Prey Lang folk all the way down in the Cardamom's. and everywhere.
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Re: Cry of Alarm: Cambodia's Prey Lang Wildlife Santuary is being 'Gutted'

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

Image
‘Our Traditions Are Being Destroyed’: Illegal Logging, Repression, and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Violations in Cambodia’s Protected Forests
January 28, 2022Index Number: ASA 23/5183/2022

Cambodia lost nearly 2.5 million hectares of tree cover between 2001 and 2020. Illegal logging in Cambodia is posing an existential threat to the country’s remaining primary forests. In addition to the well-documented threats which this poses to biodiversity and climate, it also entails severe consequences for Indigenous Peoples’ cultures and human rights.

This report documents how the actions of Cambodian authorities violate the rights of the Kuy people and how Cambodian authorities thwart the Kuy people in their efforts to protect the Prey Lang and Prey Preah Roka forests.
Image

Long read:
View Report in English - French/Spanish/Arabic also available
pdf on link
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/as ... 3/2022/en/
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