US Urged to Save Trees

KHMER TIMES
MAY TITTHARA

Villagers hired by timber processing factories take illegally cut trees to the factories. KT/Mai Vireak

A group of environmental NGOs working to protect the Prey Lang forest called on the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to intervene and protect the region’s resin trees, or they will all be logged within six months, they claimed in a joint-statement issued yesterday.

The statement urged USAID, which works in the region on a program called Supporting Forests and Biodiversity, to make efforts to add resin trees to its mandate.

“Our working group to monitor the forests in Cambodia has predicted that within six months all of the resin trees will be lost in the Prey Lang and Preah Vihear areas,” it said.

“Resin trees are being cut in the protected forest areas and community forests to supply wood for the factories around those areas. Dealers have announced in public they will buy the trees without fear of prosecution.”

The statement claims that a logging company named 95 PNT Thy Nga has sent out teams to log resin trees and is demanding villagers sell their trees for as little as 10,000 riel (about $2.50).

“Daily resin collection by local people has almost completely ended now that up to 80 percent of resin trees in some community forests have been lost, as well as from a depth of 40 kilometers into the Prey Lang protected area.”

It says that at least five timber processing factories are operating in economic and social land concessions in Kampong Thom province in communities supported by USAID and Winrock International, despite a recent ban on logging by the government. The statement urges USAID to intervene and ensure authorities actually enforce the logging ban, rather than openly support logging.

“[The logging] is due to the joint conspiracy of local authorities and the Forestry Administration to facilitate the illegal timber business. Wood smuggling is even protected by the armed forces.”

On May 9, the government issued a sub-decree declaring the Prey Lang forest a wildlife sanctuary covering some 430,000 hectares in four provinces, and tasked the Environment Ministry with its management.

On Tuesday, the National Committee for Forest Crime Prevention acknowledged that although there were efforts from authorities to prevent logging in the country, illegal logging and wood smuggling were still taking place.

Ouch Leng, president of the Cambodian Human Rights Task Force – one of the NGOs that signed the statement – said that so far USAID had failed to protect villagers out of fear of dealing with the timber companies.

“Eventually all the wood, and with it the money, will be lost. Local people’s livelihoods are already getting worse from day to day.

“Soon there will be no traditional jobs besides slavery to the logging companies. When the resin trees have been completely destroyed, there will be no reason left to protect what is left of the forests, and people will move in to turn it all into farmland,” he warned.

Mr. Leng said that Environment Minister Say Samal had recently asked for $50 million from the US government to preserve Prey Lang, but given the number of timber factories still operating in the area it does not appear that authorities really care.

Representatives from USAID did not respond to emailed questions in time for publication.

Top Kakada, the director of the Kampong Thom provincial environment department, said yesterday that forest crimes in the province had greatly decreased in recent months and were certainly not a cause for alarm.

He refuted the claims of wide-scale logging and land grabbing in Prey Lang, but admitted it could well be happening outside the protected forest.

“Prey Lang in the past, we see that it’s alone and has been exploited, but after that we made it a wildlife sanctuary, it became a protected conservation area...and we will work to prevent it from destruction,” he said, stressing that all of his work was done according to instructions from ministry directors and the provincial governor.