STUNG TRENG, Cambodia — In early October, work began on power lines that will run about 300 kilometers, or 190 miles, and that conservationists have labeled “a death sentence” to Cambodia’s Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary. The transmission lines are slated to run from a substation on the outskirts of the capital, Phnom Penh, to Cambodia’s northeastern border with Laos, slicing through the densest part of the 490,000-hectare (1.2-million-acre) protected rainforest, vital wildlife habitats and two existing REDD+ projects. The 500-kilovolt transmission line project has remained largely dormant since it was initially approved in 2020, although the years that followed saw conservationists decry its potential environmental impacts. As of Nov. 18, satellite imagery shows a route 30 meters wide and 5.8 kilometers long (100 feet by 3.6 miles) has been cleared through the wildlife sanctuary’s northeastern section in Stung Treng province. The freshly cut track follows a route mapped out as one option for the transmission lines by Electricité du Cambodge, the state-owned electricity utility, in April 2021. If completed as mapped, the lines will run 65 km (40 mi) through Prey Lang. The rainforest surrounding the plotted route provides habitat for a wide array of wildlife, including the endangered Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) and pileated gibbon (Hylobates pileatus), as well as the Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) and banteng (Bos javanicus), both of which are listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List. Prey Lang also houses hundreds of plant species, including 14 known to be at risk of extinction…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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