Picking up the scraps

earth, with locals reaping few of the benefits.

“We are poorer now than when we farmed rice,” said Chrouth Thea, a 31-year-old father of three in Sen Monorom commune.

As at other houses in the village, Thea also has a motorcycle in his front yard modified specially to carry wood – stripped of all excess weight, including the seat, and outfitted with tire chains like a prop from the movie Mad Max.

Thea and his wife used to farm rice and vegetables on rotating plots of communal land, a hallmark of the traditional Phnong lifestyle. But the land once used by their community for farming has been eaten up by private companies, one of which now employs the couple as labourers.

Even as timber exports to Vietnam reached $40 million last year, Thea and his wife have seen little change. Most homes in their village still have no toilets, and they collect water from a nearby polluted stream.

“Before, we didn’t know how it worked – how to grab the land and sell the land. By the time we realised it, the land was gone,” Thea said. “The ones who used to own land no longer have land. The ones who didn’t now have it.”

Deforestation in Mondulkiri is intrinsically tied to the loss of indigenous land rights, according to logging activist Marcus Hardtke.

Today there are more than 20 companies with land concessions in Mondulkiri, despite the fact that most of the province is designated a protected area and the communal land rights of ethnic minorities are guaranteed by law.

“This legal requirement has been undermined and ignored at every level of government for 10 years,” Hardtke said. “Since then, the damage has been done.”

Since the mid-2000s, when many of the land concessions were awarded, communities have lost cohesion, villagers have been pressured to accept land titles and those resisting have been bullied by authorities.

Villagers say the most valuable kinds of trees, like rosewood, disappeared from Mondulkiri’s forests about four years ago. Now secondary species like neang nuon and koki, once plentiful, are on the brink of disappearing too.

Few conservationists blame locals like Khoeun and Thea. Instead, they say, the vast majority of logging is conducted by well-connected cartels exporting wood to Vietnam with the collusion of border police, environmental officials and military, who allegedly allow large groups of Vietnamese loggers across the border to cut wood in Cambodian territory.

It wasn’t far from a crossroads near the O’Huch border checkpoint – where three rangers were shot and killed in January in a confrontation with Cambo- dian authorities – that Vietnamese loggers were recently running a large timber operation.

In the weeks since the shooting, many involved in the trade have disappeared and police have abandoned several checkpoints along the road, allowing people like Khoeun to enter and scavenge for scraps.

The evidence is still there: long planks of beng, neang nuon, and koki, far larger than Khoeun could transport; rest areas littered with Vietnamese candy wrappers; tree trunks carved with Vietamese writing.

Sok Ratha, an Adhoc coordinator based in Mondulkiri, said corrupt officials allow the timber trade to Vietnam to continue with impunity, and the court system regularly punishes small-time offenders instead of going after the big companies doing most of the cutting.

“[Locals] work hard to protect the forest, but they have not been encouraged by authorities at the state or local level,” Ratha said. “Instead they have earned scorn and threats and accusations and arrest. This makes them lose the will to protect the forest.”

For many locals, the timber trade has also warped their sense of right and wrong.

Residents of Pou Tru village speak of Environment Ministry ranger Theun Soknay, one of three patrollers killed in January, as a Robin Hood-like figure with a complex moral code.

According to them, Soknay allowed villagers to collect small amounts of timber without arresting them or demanding money. But when he found large groups of loggers, especially Vietnamese, he seized chainsaws and motorbikes