- Cambodia’s environment minister has actually purchased a restriction on forest clearance at a hydropower task website where activists and media, consisting of Mongabay, formerly reported indicators of prohibited logging.
- The Stung Meteuk hydropower task is being established by a business under Ly Yong Phat, a ruling celebration senator well-known for a long history of ecologically and socially damaging organizations.
- In April, Mongabay recorded the unlawful logging operations at the job website, where logging paths had actually been cut leading into the close-by Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary.
- Activists have actually invited the order to stop forest clearance, however state they’re hesitant the restriction will be imposed versus such an effective figure, keeping in mind that wood processing continues at the website.
PHNOM PENH– In an uncommon transfer to fight forest criminal offenses, Cambodian Environment Minister Eang Sophalleth on Sept. 2 prohibited all forest clearance at the website of a dam task in the nation’s southwest.
The restriction followed numerous occurrences of unlawful logging inside a secured location were reported, consisting of by Mongabay, in connection to the Stung Meteuk hydropower task in Koh Kong and Pursat provinces.
Activists keeping an eye on the logging operations on the ground stay hesitant over the effectiveness of the restriction, keeping in mind that wood processing continues at the website of the hydropower task.
In a letter dated Sept. 2 and resolved to Ly Yong Phat, chair of Steung Meteuk Hydropower Co. Ltd., Sophalleth purchased the business to momentarily suspend its activities connected to clearing forest for the 150-megawatt dams’ tanks, in addition to the processing of logged lumber.
Forest activists have actually spotted lumber trucks running deep in the jungle beyond the hydropower task website. Image provided by Tat Oudom.
After forest criminal offenses were reported to him by the Pursat provincial ecological department, Sophalleth’s letter detailed the many occurrences of illegality connected to the $440 million hydropower job, consisting of transferring lumber without approval, logging and gathering wood beyond the designated locations, in addition to moving and processing wood without paying taxes.
Mongabay formerly recorded the prohibited logging operations that have actually emerged under the cover of the Stung Meteuk job considering that it began in late 2023. Throughout a check out to the task website in April, Mongabay revealed logging paths that had actually been cut from inside the dam tank basins into the approximately 362,000-hectare (895,000-acre) Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary where a REDD+ job is under advancement.
The sanctuary houses a large selection of wildlife types, a lot of which are noted as threatened under the IUCN Red List, that discovered sanctuary within the rugged surface of the Cardamom Mountains, a separated, remote and verdant rain forest. The mountainous nature of the Cardamoms, their tendency for extreme rains and the reasonably low population density have actually left the forests in far much better condition than much of those that stay throughout Cambodia.
This hasn’t avoided loggers from attempting to smuggle important wood out of one of the last,