[Vietnamization, Logging] Cambodian rangers take on villagers in forest war: Special report

An armed ranger patrols a road often used by illegal timber and wildlife traders near Sre Ambel. (Photo: Jack Board)

Cambodian rangers take on villagers in forest war: Special report

Channe News Asia | 12 August 2016

In part 3 of a special series on deforestation in Cambodia, Jack Board goes on patrol with the armed rangers tasked with protecting the forests from those cutting down protected trees for a fast buck. 

SRE AMBEL, Cambodia: Under a thick tree canopy and steady drizzle, a squadron of motorcycles traverse a trail made muddy and sticky by the ongoing wet season. A road becomes a track that becomes wilderness.

As small creeks form below their wheels, suddenly the four rangers come to a halt, kill their engines and listen intently in silence

“We hear chainsaws,” their leader, Volodomyr Mokh, says, his eyes lit up with intensity. “Now we try to find them.”

In one of Cambodia’s most precious forests, a war is going on.

The quartet follows the high-pitched buzzing as best they can through the dense forest. Evidence of the possible wielders of the chainsaws proves not too difficult to find – a burnt-out campfire, clothes hastily left behind in hidden enclaves in the foliage, and freshly cut piles of wood.

“They were probably here this morning. This amount they can’t take so they leave it,” says Mokh, a serious Ukrainian with a broad chest and a searching gaze. He is a man who has seen and committed violence in his life, formerly serving in his country’s military and the special team of Ukraine’s police force.

Now, he is deeply embroiled in a complex game of hide and seek pitting villager against ranger, as part of the Southern Cardamoms Forest Protection Program - a joint cooperation between the Cambodian government and non-government organisation Wildlife Alliance.

The rangers undertake long missions into the forest that last five to six days.

Life is tough out here and the stakes are high – jail time and heavy fines await perpetrators. For the Southern Cardamoms, the cost could be the irretrievable loss of ancient forest and extinction of its precious wildlife.

Mokh and a handful of local police officers are about all that stands between the forest and the type of environmental destruction that has scarred much of this country.

“Everyone in the village comes to the forest. Everyone. To take something,” Mokh says after discovering three motorcycles abandoned by their owners deep into the hunt.

That ‘something’ refers to the highly-valuable wood taken from felled trees and endangered animals, including civets, pangolins and turtles, which are ripe for the black market in Vietnam and China.

With no evidence of wrongdoing but only strong suspicions, the rangers disable the vehicles. “There’s no reason to come here but for wood or wildlife,” he explains. “So we have to track them.”

Despite the lead, the forensic-like examination of tyre tracks and footprints and a vault of military thinking, that task proves tough in the conditions.

“It’s difficult, it’s been raining all day,” Mokh says. “Normally we can see the oxcart trail where they go to cut and where they keep the chainsaws and wood. Today, we can only see the fresh tracks and the deep ones.”

Bereft of a path further into the misty mountains, the group backtracks as the rain becomes tropically torrential. They pass villagers huddled and protected in basic wooden houses but press on.

Crime does not stop for the elements, clearly.

However, not all missions end up with the rangers left empty handed.

Freshly cut trees can easily be found throughout the forest. 

A RICH BOUNTY 

When Mokh pulls open the large storage shed door at his ranger station, he reveals an astonishing sight.

Hundreds of chainsaws lay stacked on the floor, against the wall and on wooden shelving. He says there are about 860 chainsaws that have been confiscated from the forest; it is illegal in Cambodia to have one without a government permit, which is very difficult to obtain.

This collection has been gathered over the past four years, at an average of about 20 each month lately. The rangers have plans to destroy them at some point, but for now the giant stack remains an impressive visual show of progress.

More than 800 chainsaws have been confiscated in the past four years.

As well, their bounty includes tonnes of luxury wood worth tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of animal snares, chemical barrels to be used for drug production, dozens of motorcycles and literally a stack of boats that have been deliberately sunk and stored under water in the river in front of the station.

The vehicles can be collected by their owner if they pay a transactional fee, but Mokh says they rarely are.

This ranger station, just outside the town of Sre Ambel, is one of six under the Wildlife Alliance banner dotted throughout the Southern Cardamoms - part of one of the region’s most precious rainforests, still unexplored in many parts.

It is home to dozens of threatened species of animals and trees. But much of its landscape has been routed by economic land concessions, granted by the Cambodian government to big companies that normally deforest their territory and convert it to sugar cane or rubber plantations.

Cambodia has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world. According to satellite data from Global Forest Watch, the country experienced a 14 per cent average increase in forest loss each year between 2001 and 2014.

Much of the country’s sanctuaries and national parks have been ripe targets. In the Southern Cardamoms, a transnational highway ripped through the forest in 2002 and opened the gates to more land grabbers and poachers.

Since then, the rangers have held their battle on grounds where they can make tangible progress - against small local operators who feed the insatiable illegal timber trade. Rare rosewood is in high demand from Vietnam and operators go to drastic lengths to deliver it.

As a result, the rangers’ clandestine night operations have become a necessary weapon against their increasingly sophisticated adversaries.

The rangers are armed but say conflict is rare, as most offenders flee the scene.

TRUST AND SACRIFICE

On a clear night, with stars overhead, the rangers plot their next move.

Always, the tactics need to be unpredictable – different times, different routes and different targets.

Mohk and his assistant Sowath Rethy, a thin, bright, fresh-faced 28-year-old from Battambang, explain how many locals conspire to foil their missions. Spies are everywhere, smugglers are in constant communication and the rangers are often fed deceptive information to lead them off the trail.

Mokh and Rethy, the only English speakers on the team, do not even trust many of their own team members. It means cell phones are often banned from missions and the MPs – as the police uniformed rangers are known – are not given any details of the nature of the operation, even when it is underway.

All of the individuals have their own network of informants, relationships that Mokh understands can quickly become crooked when serious money is involved. Yet, without tip-offs the rangers are working blind.

Rethy says they normally pay sources up to US$50 for solid information but the amount fluctuates depending on what is uncovered. He admits how difficult it is going up against a well oiled, generationally engrained system of people with intimate local knowledge - and how often it is infighting that delivers result.

“Sometimes loggers fight among each other and give each other in. That helps a lot,” he says. “We need a lot of people to help us.”

Tonight, they are acting on information received from an informant – a large amount of wood is ready to be moved. The response is triple-pronged: An initial decoy vehicle, speedboat interceptor and a night ambush using motorcycles.

The previous night they had some success, seizing a tractor carrying a bundle of construction wood, worth a few hundred dollars. As usual, the perpetrators fled when they were intercepted to avoid arrest.

Buoyed by that breakthrough, Mokh begins proceedings at 9pm with a slow survey of the same road he targeted in the rain the previous day. His muscular utility truck is nothing but obvious, with high beam lights blasting holes in the darkness and Russian hip-hop reverberating in the cabin.

This is all about sending a message - notice us.

He slows and sees buffaloes standing idle, tied to a stake by the roadside. “Probably waiting for work,” he exclaims with anticipation. The powerful animals are the vehicles of choice to move large quantities of wood from the forest.

“They don’t go every day but three times a week for sure. I hope we will be lucky.”

Regular night ambushes are essential to trying to stop the secretive movement of timber. 

It is after midnight by the time that Rethy and two other rangers are plying that same stretch, only now on motorcycles and dressed in civilian clothing. The hope is that an earlier patrol will embolden villagers to act, only to be ensnared by this subtler rearguard patrol.

The trio hitches hammocks 20 metres from the roadside and settles in. A lack of sleep is a familiar pattern for them. “Normally I get about four hours a night,” Rethy says.

On longer patrols, the rangers can be away from base walking for five or six days deep into the mountains. If they make a large seizure it can be even longer, meaning days without proper rest, food or even water in the dry season.

“It’s tough but we have to do it,” he adds, while speaking about how much he misses his newly born son, back home with his wife hundreds of kilometres away.

These men are sacrificing more than their time to save this forest.

Throughout the night the group is watching the light, and the road, more than their watches. And as the dark filters into dawn it becomes clear that their trap has failed.

Fresh oxcart tracks, just up the road, veering suddenly into the undergrowth tells them they were close. Perhaps the full moonlight gave them away this time.

How long will they have to keep this up? “Things aren’t going to change. Most Cambodians are poor and don’t have good jobs. The forest is right there for them,” Rethy laments.

Still, the men continue to stand proud in their uniforms here. This program is unique in the country, and most other forest areas in Cambodia suffer from lack of real protection.

“You feel like you’re doing something right. Humanity should change but it’s better to do something than nothing,” Mokh says.

“I can’t change the world but I can protect this area.” 

Follow Jack Board on Twitter: @JackBoardCNA

Read Part 1 of this special series: Illegal logging still threatens Cambodia's forests despite a ban on timber exports.

Part 2: Cambodian villagers fear for future amid forest burning dispute.

The final part, which will be published on Aug 14, sees the Minister in charge of Cambodia's forests challenged on what is being done to ensure illegal logging is being dealt with.

The Sre Ambel ranger station is located as a strategic launching point into the mountains.