Prime Minister Hun Manet has promised to stop illegal logging, but the environment ministry blames the activist for publicizing evidence.
By RFA Khmer2025.05.13
Environmental activist Ma Chetra photographs the stump of each felled tree. In each shot, there’s a global positioning device to display each tree’s coordinates and a tape measure showing the width of each trunk – up to 1.5 meters (5 feet) in some cases.
The evidence appears indisputable that about 200 towering sentinels of the Preah Roka Wildlife Sanctuary in northern Cambodia’s Preah Vihear province have been cut down. Ma Chetra’s video shows felled tree trunks waiting to be dragged away, already-sawn timbers and charred remains where loggers appear to have set controlled fires to remove undergrowth.
It’s the kind of destruction that has dogged Cambodia for decades, denuding some of richest forests in mainland Southeast Asia. During 2023 alone, it lost 121,000 hectares (300,000 acres) of forest — an area equivalent to the size of Los Angeles, according to a report by the University of Maryland in the U.S. and Global Forest Watch.
And Preah Roka is meant to be a protected area. The 90 square kilometer (35 square mile) sanctuary was set up in 2016 to preserve the region’s biodiversity and support sustainable forest use by the local community. A recent study found this and adjoining sanctuaries support dozens of wild elephants.
Prime Minister Hun Manet has, in fact, vowed to stop the destruction of Cambodia’s forests. In December 2023, Four months after taking office, he thanked Cambodians for sharing evidence of illegal logging on his Facebook page and told Ministry of Environment officials they already had the power to stop the practice.
He used martial language to drive the point home.
“You have swords in your hands. I still stand behind you. You need to implement the law,” the prime minister told assembled ministry officials.