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Illegal logging persists deep in the heart of Cambodia’s Chhaeb-Preah Roka Wildlife Sanctuary amid government inaction and even complicity with the loggers.
PREAH VIHEAR, Cambodia — Sometime after 10 a.m. on Friday, April 21, sweat poured down the face of veteran environmental activist San Mala as he crawled through the forest undergrowth, some 16 kilometers deep in the heart of Chhaeb-Preah Roka Wildlife Sanctuary in northern Cambodia. Veteran Cambodian environmentalist San Mala hides from Ministry of Environment rangers that aimed to detain him in Chhaeb-Preah Roka Wildlife Sanctuary in April 2023. Image by Chasing Deforestation / Mongabay.
Armed rangers working for the Ministry of Environment pursued the community through Chhaeb-Preah Roka Wildlife Sanctuary in April 2023. Image by Chasing Deforestation / Mongabay.Two days earlier, on the evening of April 19, Mala arrived in a village just outside Chhaeb-Preah Roka Wildlife Sanctuary. There, he met 12 members of Prey Preah Roka Community Network to prepare for what was supposed to be a three-day patrol in the protected forest.
Prior to August 2023, the Preah Roka and Chhaeb wildlife sanctuaries were two separate protected areas, spanning some 90,000 and 190,000 hectares respectively, but they have since been merged and absorbed additional land in an. But this may be an underestimate, according to data gathered on the ground by the Prey Preah Roka Community Network, which has uncovered a more egregious pattern of deforestation.
“Now, when we see loggers, all we can do is film them and report it. Before, when we patrolled with government rangers, we could arrest them.” Two members of the Prey Preah Roka Community Network – a grassroots activism group made up of communities around the wildlife sanctuary – document an illegally logged tree in the wildlife sanctuary. The grassroots group regularly patrol the wildlife sanctuary, documenting any illegal logging they come across by marking GPS coordinates, as well as taking a note of the species and diameter of the trees. Image by Andy Ball / Mongabay.
Loggers carve out the valuable center of the trees. The cuboid sawn logs taken are easier to stack and transport than round logs, but the process creates a lot of waste. Image by Andy Ball / Mongabay. Loggers typically target a cluster of high-value old-growth trees, making it easier for the community to track the path of destruction through their forest patrols. Image by Andy Ball / Mongabay.Sokhun usually leads these patrols twice a month during the dry season; in the wet season, even the koy-yun struggle to churn through the mud, meaning the forest is usually at its safest when the rain is heaviest.
When contacted in September, Phay Bunchoeun, spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment, said the ministry’s rangers cooperate with community members who wish to patrol the forest, but noted that only community organizations that have signed contracts with the ministry are able to participate.that show a spike in tree cover loss across Chhaeb-Preah Roka in 2020 and 2021 following the ban on the Prey Preah Roka Community Network’s patrols.
“A large number of perpetrators who have been cracked down on in the past have been sentenced to prison and have not been released to date,” Bunchoeun said. Illegally logged timber is transported out of Chhaeb-Preah Roka Wildlife Sanctuary in September 2022, with loggers using water buffalo. Image by Ma Chettra.While logging dominated the sugar plantations in this part of the protected area’s borders, some 40 km further south two Vietnamese rubber plantations,No rubber trees were ever planted, but PNT and Thy Nga gutted the supply of commercially viable timber from inside their concessions, as well as beyond their borders — including timber.
“It looks like it’s not a protected forest, it’s a forest for their businesses,” he said of the various factions involved in the destruction of the forest. “And we know a lot of officials, but they are lacking a willingness to protect the forest.” Patrols in October 2022 and August 2022 produced 79 and 258 illegal logging data points respectively.
The concession Mala referred to is the Macle Logistics concession, some 40 km from Chhaeb-Preah Roka.
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