Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Despite Prey Lang's ecological significance, the Cambodian government has yet to de-
clare it a protected area. Since the late 1990s, firms linked to high-ranking government
officials have been granted logging concessions in and around Prey Lang, on the pretext
of clearing land for agro-plantations. In 2007 the London-based environmental watchdog
Global Witness reported in detail on one particular project, the Tumring Rubber Planta-
tion, a 4,359-hectare concession used as cover for the extraction of huge amounts of tim-
ber. Global Witness linked logging proceeds to relatives of Prime Minister Hun Sen, his
bodyguard unit, and authorities at every level of government.
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The Tumring logging operation wound up in 2006, but it wasn't the first or last venture
of its kind. In 2010 the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) leased
a 6,044-hectare plantation in Kampong Thom province's Sandan district to a Vietnamese
rubber firm called CRCK, not far from where the Tumring operation had been. The log-
gers soon got to work, striking new roads through the forest. Standing in the CRCK plant-
ation clearing, Mao Chanthoeun, an activist with the Prey Lang Community Network,
which patrols the forest and documents logging activities, told me that the trees were
felled several months ago, but that fires to clear roots and scrub had raged just the night
before. When network activists protested against the felling, the authorities said they'd
suspend their work. “But they didn't stop,” she said, smoke curling upwards from charred
logs nearby. “They cut trees night and day.”
Kuy tribespeople living around the CRCK plantation all had a similar story. “They des-
troyed our cashew nut trees,” said Chea Sot, a man in a faded T-shirt who lost a hectare of
cultivated fields to the bulldozers. Local officials arrived, took his name, and promised to
compensate him for the loss of his crop. Nothing happened. “The company got my land,
but they didn't give me anything back. There was no compensation at all.” Kun Thea,
from the same village, said her family relies on the tapping of resin, which they sell or
barter in Sandan town. “We have no rice fields,” she said from her perch on a mound of
earth near a felled tree, where more local people sat and surveyed the scene. “We need
oxen or buffalo to help cultivate the land, but we don't have any. That's why we need the
trees.”
There's evidence that CRCK's logging operation extends far beyond the official planta-
tion boundaries. According to Chhim Savuth, a wiry former soldier who has fought illeg-
al logging in Cambodia since 2002, the company fells logs as far as 20 kilometers away
and then trucks them back within the concession in order to conceal the illegal harvests.
“This company gets very good access. They destroy more forest than other companies,
right in the middle of the jungle,” Savuth said, as we bumped along the muddy road from
the provincial capital of Kampong Thom to Sandan, occasionally passing a large truck
filled with timber planks. The local authorities have even provided battalions of police
and military police to help guard the plantation area. “They all get money,” he said, star-
