krisduncs wrote: ↑Fri Jan 15, 2021 3:53 am Dont mean to be anal. But! The hill one can see fires on,is NOT Bokor hill. It is actually called,"Komchai Thmei". Bokor becomes visible as one heads towards the hill on route 3,towards Sihanoukville. FACT!
Just saying,for a friend.......

Maybe ..... but it is part of the National Park when you look at maps

I actually took a ride up bokor mountain yesterday 14th



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@whatwhat
I beg to differ about Flint's Water Problems:
Your quote: So the water in the Flint river isn't and wasn’t contaminated by any human activity. It just has naturally high Chloride content.

Not entirely true, otherwise they wouldn't charge Ex Governor Rick Snyder
Six years after the city of Flint, Michigan, began using a toxic water source that sickened its residents, VICE uncovered payoffs, the silencing of a whistleblower, a shady financial deal, a coverup, and the former governor who presided over it all.

Ex-Governor Rick Snyder Is Reportedly Being Charged for the Flint Water Crisis

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dpk93/ ... ter-crisis

Jan 16.2021 update. Fires continue near the small Pagoda on the footpath to the waterfall(s) facing Andong Khmer commune.

Kampot's Airquality is going down. It's been very hazy in the past week or so, after the cold spell anyway. Prior to that it dependend on the direction of the wind wether you could breath fresh air or not with the constant fires on the slopes of Bokor Mountain.

Now here is an analysis which claims that Air Pollution will trigger Migration. My advise :Don't come to Kampot, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Shanghai etc. they're all polluted.

Air pollution will lead to mass migration, say experts after landmark ruling
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ark-ruling

emm wrote: ↑Fri Jan 15, 2021 11:21 pm @whatwhat
I beg to differ about Flint's Water Problems:
Your quote: So the water in the Flint river isn't and wasn’t contaminated by any human activity. It just has naturally high Chloride content.

Not entirely true, otherwise they wouldn't charge Ex Governor Rick Snyder
Six years after the city of Flint, Michigan, began using a toxic water source that sickened its residents, VICE uncovered payoffs, the silencing of a whistleblower, a shady financial deal, a coverup, and the former governor who presided over it all.

Ex-Governor Rick Snyder Is Reportedly Being Charged for the Flint Water Crisis

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dpk93/ ... ter-crisis

The article you linked to doesn’t even say he’s been charged with anything just that he’s “reportedly” being investigated and the case is coming to a close. Two unrelated things.

Besides which if you bothered to read up on it the Flint water wasn’t contaminated by human activity. It’s from the pipes.

Look it you can’t read then don’t bother saying stuff that isn’t true.

^^^
@emm @whatwat - stick to the topic please. Water contamination in the US has nothing to do with this.

100 Hectares on Fire. Well, this news is from 2007 but proof of how long this has been going on.

ttps://english.cambodiadaily.com/news/bokor-forest-fire-rages-over-100-hectares-73061/

Hey CNNemm.
The articles says it was careless villagers and quotes them saying it’s an issue especially since there’s little rain and no roads to get access (which begs the question why would anyone try and clear inaccessible land). So it’s a Forrest fire not some illegal clearing.

Keep emm coming. You’re making yourself look foolish.

Unless you say “It’s the CPP media. They would say that”
Then why post it?

Traveller Report 2014-16

Threats for the Park
Burning Bokor Mountain
'Burning Bokor Forests' by Asienreisender

Bokor's forests are permanently set under fire in the dry season. Arson helps poachers to drive animals out of their hideouts. There is no effective protection for the park, and the common pattern in this country is that officials are always involved into the rape of the nature.

In global comparison Cambodia has one of the world's worst deforestation rates. While in 1970 Cambodia was covered by some 80% with jungle, the forest decreased to estimated 3% in the recent years. A forest cover survey in 2005 revealed that Cambodia lost 29% of it's primary rainforest within five years only.

The forest destroying industries find the easiest access to the jungle in the lowlands, where they accomplish their work first with the lowest investment costs and the roughest methods as violent land grabbing. Now the last remaining refuges in mountainous areas are under severe attack.

In 2004, Bokor was one of Cambodia's best protected national parks. It was listed as an ASEAN Heritage Park, and a number of independent conservation groups spent their resources into it's protection. A certain cooperation with the Cambodian government was given.

The Bokor National Park is part of the Elephant Mountains (Damrei Mountains) and bordering the Kirirom National Park further north. Now both parks are separated from each other by a main road connecting Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville. The road cuts the territories of species and gives easier access to natural areas who were formerly hard to reach. Poachers and illegal loggers take advantage from that.
Illegal Logging

Since Bokor is home to a number of rare or even unique plants and wildlife such as blackwood, rosewood and aloewood, it's an attractive target for poachers. It's possible to reach high prices for seldom species on the black markets. Poachers and illegal loggers make much more money with that than they could ever earn by doing a conventional job in the local economy.

To protect Bokor, a conservation programme called 'Surviving Together' was implemented in the year 2000. Surviving Together provided training and support for 55 park rangers. The rangers guarded Bokor's forests and confiscated chainsaws, destroyed poachers camp's and charcoal kilns and they removed thousands of snares from the forest every year. A dangerous job, because poachers are armed and not just willing to retreat when a ranger tells them to.

A poster in the countryside east of Bokor warns before cutting trees. There are spirits living in them...

Despite their efforts the problems in the park increased. Larger numbers of illegal chainsaws were found every year. In 2007 alone 153 chainsaws were confiscated.

A single chainsaw costs between 200 and 800 dollars. That's a considerable investment for a villager, but a cubic metre of blackwood or rosewood sold on the black market therefore brings already an equivalent of the money back. A single chainsaw user can fell and cut four or five trees a day. In whole Bokor National Park are estimated 150 chainsaws in use for illegal logging. Since the villagers who perform the logging themselves don't have access to the black market for timber, they cooperate with middlemen from outside. Probably most of them are also equipped by these outsiders. And these 'outsiders' are usually integrated into the networks of the army, police, politics, cooperating with normal businessmen who do then the money laundry work.

In the rural parts around the Bokor Mountain massive are estimated 50,000 people living. Since ever they lived from the forest resources, collecting wood and plants, hunting, also logging in a moderate scale. This model was sustainable for thousands of years. Just since the second half of the 20th century the equilibrium is out of balance. More and more is taken out and can't recover in time or at all.

The figure of 50,000 might be too moderate, for the city of Kampot alone inhabits more than 50,000 people alone, who, by a considerable part, also prey on the forest's resources.

Population growth and particularly poverty are the reasons for the overcrop, so far it concerns the simple people in the villages and hamlets. They even lack basics as clean water, food and healthy housing. When it comes to the networks and companies behind them, it's all about profit and money making for those who are rich anyway. The trouble for the villagers is that the process destroys their ecological and economic basics, while big money just moves to another place after one is wrecked down.

Back in time, before the invention of chainsaws it took several men a week of work to cut down and prepare a single big, old tree. Now, equipped with a chainsaw, a single logger does that work within an hour.

By the way, when moving around up on Bokor Hill Station and the wider surrounding one does not see a single old, giant jungle tree anymore. The remaining forest there is all young, most of it of the same age and height, secondary forest it seems mixed into remaining primary forest of low economic value, while the 'best pieces' have been cut out. The remaining old trees grow in steep slope positions, hardly accessible for the loggers. Some are to see when coming the new road up to Bokor Mountain.

http://www.asienreisender.de/bokor.html