Environmental activists patrolling Prey Lang forest in Cambodia’s central plains said Thursday that authorities interfered with their work and even tried to arrest them after they documented a local company conducting extensive illegal logging in the protected area.
A group known as Lovers of the Environment, which is mostly comprised of youth activists, launched a campaign on Wednesday to drive their motorbikes through Prey Lang’s wildlife sanctuary areas of O’Anamai, O’Romany, O’Krak, O’Sgnuot, and Red Mountain over the course of five days to monitor for illegal logging activities.
Heng Sros, one of the group’s campaigners, told RFA’s Khmer Service on Thursday that over the course of just two days he saw “hundreds of people” in the forest illegally cutting down old-growth trees and transporting them to sawmills run by Think-Biotech Co., Ltd. on the outskirts of Prey Lang, where they were processed and sold for around U.S. $225 per cubic meter.
In full: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/forest-04232020172540.html
