Mongabay
Forest loss in mountains of Southeast Asia accelerates at ‘shocking’ pace
Southeast Asia is home to roughly half of the world’s tropical mountain forests. These highland ecosystems support massive carbon stores and tremendous biodiversity, including a host of species that occur nowhere else on the planet. But new evidence suggests these havens are in grave danger. ...
Carolyn Cowan
Irrigation dams threaten Thailand’s tiger forests, say conservationists
A plan to construct seven dams in one of mainland Southeast Asia’s last intact forest systems could cause widespread habitat loss and sever important wildlife corridors, activists warn. The Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai (DPKY) Forest Complex is a vast and biodiverse region that spans six provinces in ...
Carolyn Cowan
Andaman forests need longer intervals between repeat logging for recovery: study
To the untrained eye discerning between evergreen and deciduous tree mosaics of the Andaman archipelago can be tough in the wet season but the patches clearly stand out in the dry season in the volcanic ridge-arc islands. In the dry season between January and April, ...
Sahana Ghosh
‘Drastic forest development’: Vietnam to plant 1 billion trees — but how?
In October and November of 2020, a relentless barrage of nine typhoons and tropical storms slammed into Vietnam, setting off record floods and countless landslides. Nearly 200 people died, and property damage was estimated at $1.5 billion. Then-Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc responded on Nov. 10 ...
Michael Tatarski
Trafficking of banned Myanmar teak lands German company with $4m fine
WOB Timber, a logging company based in Hamburg, Germany, has been ordered by a court to pay a $4 million fine for illegally trading Myanmar timber. The April 27 decision was one of the highest financial penalties for this type of crime in the European ...
Nicolás Bustamante Hernández
At Vietnam’s southern tip, mangroves defend the land from the encroaching sea
Seen from above, Cape Ca Mau National Park, at Vietnam’s southernmost point, juts into the Gulf of Thailand like a verdant green toe. This dark green shade is created by an expansive, ecologically vital mangrove forest. But the province the park sits in, also called Ca ...
Michael Tatarski
Cambodia puts its arduous titling process for Indigenous land up for review
Ethnic Kui Indigenous people have for generations mined the mountains and streams of Cambodia’s Romtom commune for their livelihoods. But those traditions shifted as Delcom, a Malaysian-owned gold-mining company, began digging up the land in the early 2010s and confronting artisanal miners with armed guards. ...
Danielle Keeton-Olsen
‘What other country would do this to its people?’ Cambodian land grab victims seek int’l justice
“It started when some people from the government came around the community telling us that we were illegally occupying the land,” Chhae Kimsrour said in June 2020. “I’ve lived here since 1995, but six months later they came back and started filling in my lake. ...
GERALD FLYNN, PHOUNG VANTHA
Myanmar’s environmental record was weak but improving. Then came the coup
It started with the water changing color. Soon after that, the fish began to die. When the villagers bathed, they became itchy and covered in sores like an allergic reaction. Later, women and farm animals in the area started having miscarriages at an unusually high ...
Andrew Nachemson
Thailand’s Indigenous Peoples fight for ‘land of our heart’ (commentary)
On Sept. 3, 2019, the remains of Porlajee “Billy” Rakchongcharoen, a Karen environmental and community rights defender who was disappeared in 2014, were found in an oil drum submerged under the Kaeng Krachan dam suspension bridge in Phetchaburi, Thailand. Billy was last seen by his community while ...
Pirawan Wongnithisathaporn, Thomas Worsdell
