• Cambodia’s Prey Lang forest was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 2016, but illegal land clearing within the protected area continues, a new report has found.
• Members of the Cambodian Youth Network (CYN), who recently patrolled 1,761 hectares (4,352 acres) of forest in Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, found that several hundred hectares of dense, evergreen forest had been cleared, and hundreds of trees had been marked for logging in the near future.
• CYN worries that if the clearing continues, the government could grant economic land concessions on those lands in the future.
• CYN has called on the Cambodian government to crack down on the illegal encroachment and stop any more forest from being cleared.

Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia continues to be illegally cleared, according to a new report by the Cambodian Youth Network (CYN).

Located in the central plains of Cambodia, Prey Lang forest straddles the four provinces of Kratie, Stung Treng, Kampong Thom and Preah Vihear. In 2016, to halt the rampant illegal logging that had been degrading the forest at an alarming rate, an area of nearly 4,320 square kilometers (1,668 square miles) of the forest was declared a wildlife sanctuary. But despite the protected area status, illegal clearing has continued unabated, local conservation groups have found.

Earlier this year, for example, a report by the Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN), a group of volunteers from communities living in and around Prey Lang, found that the protected area lost 56 square kilometers (22 square miles) of forest in 2017 alone.

Now, the latest report from CYN has documented further evidence of more recent illegal logging and land encroachment.

Between July and August this year, CYN and PLCN investigated instances of illegal forest clearing in the northern part of the sanctuary. They patrolled 1,761 hectares (17.6 square kilometers, or 6.8 square miles) of the forest in Stung Treng and Preah Vihear provinces, and found that several hundred hectares of dense, evergreen forest had been cleared.

Source and full article: news.mongabay.com