STUNG TRENG, Cambodia — Rain poured down in torrential sheets as Ouk Mao guided reporters through the winding dirt tracks that were, in August, rutted with deep trenches of mud and rainwater as Cambodia’s wet season began in earnest. Thunder cracked across the largely flat plains of Stung Treng province, in Cambodia’s northeast, and Mao joked about getting struck by lightning as he led Mongabay to the foot of Phnom Chhngok, a limestone mountain some 45 kilometers (28 miles) west of the provincial capital. Since 2020, the mountain, swaddled in forest and home to a flock of bats, had served as the centerpiece to an ecotourism venture that was run largely by the Indigenous Kuy ethnic group to which Mao belongs. Some 400 people, many of them Kuy, helped preserve the forest and run the ecotourism destination as part of the Phnom Chum Rok Sat community forest, a 4,153-hectare (10,262-acre) patch of forest and mountains that were, until recently, managed by the community. But all of this changed when a mining company tied to the Cambodian military began to expand operations across Phnom Chum Rok Sat earlier this year. “The big trees are all gone now,” said Mao, pointing to a pile of recently felled timber that the community forest committee confiscated from loggers operating in Phnom Chum Rok Sat in May. “Before, all that land belonged to the community forest,” Mao said. “Then Lin Vatey came, they were scouting for a mining site.” Ouk Mao showed reporters timber cut from…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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