Authorities in Cambodia seized more than 1,000 logs on
the property of a Chinese-owned sugarcane plantation this month, marking the
third time the firm has been found with illicit timber in the past year.
Local officials offered no explanation for why the
plantation’s on-site sawmill was still operating after the previous seizures.
Bun Vichet, deputy governor of Oral district, said authorities
raided the plantation, located inside the Phnom Aural Wildlife Sanctuary, in
the morning and found 1,039 logs of first-grade wood, each between
three and four meters long. Click
here to read the story in full in the Cambodia Daily.
Data on Global Forest Watch suggests more than 17,000 hectares of forest were lost in Phnom Aural between 2001 and 2014.
