- Satellite imagery, drone photography and testimony from residents indicate that work has begun on electricity transmission lines that will cut through the heart of Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary in order to connect Cambodia’s energy grid with that of Laos.
- A 5.8-kilometer-long (3.6-mile) strip of land has already been cleared inside Prey Lang, indicating that plans are moving forward to run the transmission lines 65 km (40 mi) through the sanctuary.
- Conservationists, and even the former environment minister, recommended alternate routes avoiding the core of the forest, leading one expert to question whether the lines have been deliberately sited to facilitate access by timber traffickers and land investors.
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 and at least 185 species whose conservation status is unknown due to insufficient data.
In spite of Prey Lang’s high conservation value — or perhaps because of it — the forest has long been targeted by illegal logging networks, mining operations, poachers and land grabbers. The combined rush to extract all resources above and below the ground in Prey Lang has left the rainforest in a beleaguered state. Global Forest Watch data show that, between 2001 and 2023, Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary lost more than a fifth of its forest cover, equivalent to 102,000 hectares (252,000 acres) — an area almost the size of Hong Kong.
In 2023, 11,495.54 hectares (28,406.10 acres) of forest cover were recorded as lost in Prey Lang, making it the third-worst year on record.
The new transmission lines threaten to place an additional strain on the already besieged protected forest.
“I feel really sorry now the company will build the transmission lines through Prey Lang as it will result in the loss of a lot more forest, it will impact biodiversity and cause a loss of revenue for those who rely on collecting resin, vines and honey sustainably,” said Keng Ko, a representative of the Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN) in Stung Treng province.
The PLCN has long advocated for the rights of the estimated 250,000 Indigenous Kuy people who live in and around Prey Lang. Many Kuy communities have harnessed the forest’s resources sustainably for generations, but Cambodia’s government has repeatedly clashed with the PLCN, criminalizing its forest patrols and dismissing its reports of illegal logging.
“We don’t how to deal with it,” Ko told Mongabay in a November phone interview.
Government silent as forest cleared
The transmission lines initially aimed to bring power from coal-fired plants in Laos to Cambodia’s national grid. But China’s 2021 announcement that it would no longer finance overseas coal plants, coupled with complications from the COVID-19 pandemic, saw the Laos-Cambodia transmission line project falter.
Neither Mines and Energy Minister Keo Rattanak, Environment Minister Eang Sophalleth nor the ministries’ respective spokespeople would confirm that the transmission lines are going ahead or answer any other questions about the project. But the combination of satellite imagery, drone photography and testimony from residents all suggests that the project is moving forward after years of silence.
Men Kong, a spokesperson for the Stung Treng provincial administration, acknowledged the plan is to develop transmission lines cutting through Prey Lang. According to Kong, the transmission lines will connect Cambodia’s national grid to that of Laos.
In January 2023, pro-government media reported that Laos had launched construction of a 500-kV transmission line extending toward its border with Cambodia’s Thala Barivat district, where the transmission lines are currently being built inside Prey Lang. The connection of the 500-kV transmission lines from Laos to Cambodia appears to have been confirmed back in January 2024, although the bisection of Prey Lang was notably absent in pro-government reporting.
Cambodia currently imports roughly a quarter of its electricity from Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, but Rattanak was quoted in October 2024 as saying that an additional 300 megawatts of power would come from Laotian solar and hydropower generation as soon as 2026. It’s unclear whether this is related to the new 500-kV transmission lines, which aim to serve as an upgrade to the existing 115-kV transmission line between Champasak in Laos and Stung Treng in Cambodia.
Speaking in a November phone interview, Kong, the Stung Treng government spokesperson, told Mongabay he didn’t know which company would be responsible for the project. “I am not sure, as I haven’t received any information [about that] yet.”
Regardless of the company, Kong said a feasibility study and environmental impact assessment would be necessary to minimize the adverse outcomes for the forest, although he was unable to provide details about such studies or confirm whether they had already been conducted.
Mongabay’s previous reporting uncovered that locally owned energy conglomerate SchneiTec Group had won the contract to develop the transmission lines, and found the company’s chair, Heng Socheat, was registered to vote at an address shared by Keng Chansopheak, wife of energy minister Rattanak, who was head of Electricité du Cambodge at the time. Neither Socheat nor Rattanak were able to explain the nature of their relationship or whether it gave SchneiTec an advantage in bidding for the contract to build the transmission lines.
Rattanak was promoted to minister of mines and energy in August 2023 when former Prime Minister Hun Sen ceded power to his son, Hun Manet.
Rattanak, who previously blocked a Mongabay reporter on Telegram, a popular messaging app in Cambodia, didn’t respond to phone calls, messages or questioned delivered to his office at the Ministry of Mines and Energy. Detailed questions sent to both Socheat and SchneiTec Group also went unanswered, and Mongabay was unable to confirm whether SchneiTec is still attached to the project.
Trading ecosystems for energy
Cambodia’s demand for electricity grew by an average of 19% annually between 2012 and 2021, signaling a legitimate need for new sources of energy. Both Rattanak at the energy ministry and Sophalleth at the environment ministry have recently pledged commitments to sustainability, with Cambodia aiming to increase renewables’ share of the country’s energy mix to 70% by 2030 (up from 60% in 2022) and to increase forest coverage to 60% nationwide by 2050. But neither could answer how carving Prey Lang in half fits into national strategies on sustainability.
Conservationists have repeatedly pointed out that alternative routes for the 500-kV transmission lines linking Laos to Phnom Penh would have done far less damage to Prey Lang. Indeed, documents acquired by Mongabay via previous reporting suggested that then-Environment Minister Say Samal had attempted to push for the transmission lines to be built around the forest’s edge rather than through it.
“The power line could easily have been constructed around Prey Lang following existing roads,” said Ida Theilade, a professor at the University of Copenhagen who has researched Prey Lang and Cambodia’s forests extensively. “The government and line ministries purposefully selected the line cutting through the most biodiversity rich core area of Prey Lang. This begs the question whether the real reason for the line is to get access to the valuable timber found in the core zone of Prey Lang and open the forest to well-connected investors in land.”
Infamous illegal logging networks operating in Prey Lang, such as Angkor Plywood and Holy Plantation (formerly Think Biotech), are among those that could stand to benefit from the halving of Prey Lang, Theilade warned. Data from Global Forest Watch show more than 13,000 deforestation alerts have been recorded within Prey Lang between Sept. 1 and Nov. 18, much of them centered around the area currently being cleared for the transmission lines.
The new transmission lines have already cut through a section of the Stung Treng REDD+ project, a joint crediting mechanism project managed by the Ministry of Environment and Conservation International. Neither of the project proponents would speak to the impact on the REDD+ project, but the route for the transmission lines travels nearly 15 km (9 mi) through the project’s 95,000-hectare (235,000-acre) accounting area, before running a further 10 km (6 mi) south along the REDD+ project’s border. Even if supporting infrastructure such as substations or transformers aren’t built within the project, the transmission lines and access roads will need to be excised from the project, meaning there will be fewer carbon credits to sell.
On the southwestern side of Prey Lang, in Kampong Thom province, the transmission lines will run through a second REDD+ project, Tumring REDD+. Since it began in 2015, however, the roughly 67,000-hectare (166,000-acre) project has lost more than half of its primary forest. The project’s technical consultants, Wildlife Works, pulled out of Tumring, according to a Greenpeace investigation that found the REDD+ project had been dramatically undercounting the rate of deforestation.
In addition to the land cleared inside Prey Lang, roughly 12 km (7.5 mi) of road has already been built inside Chhaeb-Preah Roka Wildlife Sanctuary, another protected forest north of Prey Lang, to make way for the transmission lines.
Splitting sanctuaries
But the immediate consequences of splitting the wildlife sanctuary in two are dwarfed by the long-term risk that the transmission lines pose, with Theilade warning that it could accelerate the erosion of the protected forest.
“We know from science that one of the worst threats to biodiversity is habitat fragmentation,” Theilade said. “The deforestation and forest fragmentation are another blow to everyone fighting for the right to a healthy, clean environment and against global warming. Prey Lang forest has a cooling effect and once gone, it will be felt across the country. People will suffer.”
Theilade warned that the new transmission lines will exacerbate what is known as the forest edge effect: newly exposed forest edges degrade faster, are more prone to exploitation at the hands of loggers, and are less likely to be crossed by pollinators such as insects and birds. Infrastructure projects that slice through rainforests create smaller pockets of habitat for wildlife species, like the Asian elephants found in Prey Lang.
“As such, the power line is a textbook example of what not to do if you want to preserve ecosystems and biodiversity and our climate,” Theilade said. “It is ironic that the government of Cambodia starts the clearing at a point in time where world leaders, including Cambodia, have just been gathered for the COP16 [U.N. biodiversity summit] and made new pledges for biodiversity and are now at Baku [Azerbaijan] for the Climate COP.”
Banner image: Fresh forest clearance inside Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary signals the beginning of an infrastructure project that will bisect the forest. Image by Gerald Flynn / Mongabay.
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