In Sre Chhuk village, a quiet patch in northeast Cambodia where the Mekong’s smaller veins trace the edge of a fading wildlife sanctuary, Vorn Pang and Sao Thorn once believed their land was safe.

By 2018, officials and conservation groups had formalized their farmland as part of the Veal Kambor Community Protected Area (CPA), under a conservation model that aims to balance local livelihoods and forest protection. In return for patrolling and managing the adjoining forests of the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, villagers retained rights to manage resources in a nearly 3,000-hectare (7,413-acre) “community zone” for 15 years.

Their fields, they were told, were secure for years to come.

That’s why it came as a shock, they said, when parts of the community zone were handed over to extractive companies starting in 2020. Vorn and Sao said they were given no compensation as marble quarries and open pits tore through their fallow rice paddies and cut into the forests where they gathered non-timber products, all in the heart of one of Cambodia’s most threatened sanctuaries.

“A meeting was held with the Ministry of Environment and company representatives for compensation but, years later, there is still nothing,” said Pang, who recalled that the meeting took place in 2021 but was unsure which firm was responsible or who initiated the discussion. “It’s all up in the air.”

The quiet handover of hundreds of hectares in the Veal Kambor CPA for mineral extraction has drawn little public attention, even as operations continue. Some companies quarrying marble inside the CPA have gone bankrupt, Ministry of Environment (MoE) rangers said, leaving water-filled quarry pits behind. Others have pushed deeper into Lumphat sanctuary’s conservation zone, despite no public record of these companies having current licenses or having conducted mandated environmental and social risk assessments.

This sidestepping of protected areas and community-inclusive conservation for commercial ventures by politically connected tycoons and conglomerates follows a longer trend in Cambodia.

Over the last 15 years, nearly 50,000 hectares (123,550 acres) — about four times the size of San Francisco — have been handed over for industrial rubber, palm oil and banana plantations within the wildlife sanctuary. In and around these concessions is where Lumphat has suffered its steepest canopy losses. Primary forest cover decreased by 50% between 2010 and 2024, according to Global Forest Watch. The fallout hit both communities and wildlife, according to local investigations.

Now, the sanctuary’s first carbon-credit REDD+ project, validated last year, has raised hopes for new protections. But looming development projects are adding to the threats. A proposed 376-megawatt hydropower dam would flood stretches of the sanctuary, including a core zone, and displace thousands of families.

The ongoing saga illustrates the battle to protect endangered species, an evergreen forest and the rights of communities that have lived in Lumphat for generations.

When “protected” land meets concession machine

Created in 1993, Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary stretches across Ratanakiri, Mondulkiri and Kratie provinces in the northeast. At more than 350,000 hectares (864,869 acres), it is one of Cambodia’s largest protected landscapes. A 2023 sub-decree pushed its borders out by another 106,087 hectares (262,147 acres), giving it a footprint larger than Mauritius.

On paper, the expansions sounded like a win for conservation. But environmental groups quickly warned that the sweeping changes, part of a nationwide push that added 550,000 hectares (1.36 million acres) to protected areas across 12 provinces, were ripe for conflict.

Communities living in and around the newly drawn boundaries said they were barely consulted, and officials have struggled for years to curb deforestation or rein in concessions inside existing protected areas.

Lumphat is steeped in these trends. Beginning in the 2010s, large swathes of protected zones within the sanctuary were leased to agro-companies through Cambodia’s economic land concession scheme. Later, these concessions were rebranded as sustainable use areas, a designation under a 2008 decree that allows for investment or development activities within a protected area.

In Lumphat, the heaviest deforestation since 2009 has occurred inside or just beyond these concessions, according to Mongabay’s analysis of concession maps and tree cover data recorded by Global Forest Watch.

Geo-agronomist Jean-Christophe Diepart, who has researched agrarian change in Cambodia for more than two decades, said Lumphat’s problems are neither new nor unique.

“Sustainable use zone is just a trendy word that just means ‘open for development,’” he said. “In Lumphat, conservation and development are not really coexisting.”

MoE spokesperson Khvay Atiya did not respond to a request for comment on Diepart’s assessment.

Lumphat intersperses dry deciduous woodland with evergreen forest, supporting three critically endangered birds. In 2022, that included an estimated 50 of Cambodia’s national bird, the giant ibis (Thaumatibis gigantea), roughly one sixth of the global population.

As of the latest census in 2024, only 33 giant ibis were recorded in the sanctuary.

The sanctuary’s roster of threatened birds extends further, with internationally important numbers of white-shouldered ibis (Pseudibis davisoni), red-headed vultures (Sarcogyps calvus), sarus cranes (Antigone antigone), greater adjutants (Leptoptilos dubius), lesser adjutants (Leptoptilos javanicus) and green peafowl (Pavo muticus). Under the canopy, other globally imperiled species hold on, including critically endangered Siamese crocodiles (Crocodylus siamensis), endangered Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) and two wild bovids, banteng (Bos javanicus) and gaur (Bos gaurus).

But it’s not just endangered wildlife that are under threat.

Legally dubious: Quarries carve up a community protected area

About 13,000 people live in 26 villages within the sanctuary, including Indigenous and ethnic minority groups such as Kuy and Lao. After new zoning decrees in 2017, at least seven CPAs were established in Lumphat with donor and management support from international conservation groups including BirdLife International.

The CPAs cover more than 23,000 hectares (56,834 acres) or nearly 7% of Lumphat and are the zones where local residents are formally recognized and given authority to manage and sustainably use natural resources. These communities also organize monthly patrols designed to prevent forest crimes.

Yet, most CPAs are hemmed in by private plantations or industrial projects. Veal Kambor CPA, where Vorn Pang and Sao Thorn formerly farmed, is the starkest example.

Between 2020 and 2022, at least five mining companies were granted hundreds of hectares of concessions within the 3,000-hectare (7,413-acre) Veal Kambor area, now designated a sustainable use zone, according to an analysis of license documents shared with a CPA leader and reviewed by Mongabay. Another 10-hectare (24.7-acre) concession was issued just outside the sanctuary in a conservation zone, while an additional 20 hectares (49 acres) appear to require further approval before any quarrying, though the process for obtaining it is unclear.

NatureLife Cambodia, which, alongside BirdLife International, has helped the government and locals manage Lumphat since 2005, was only aware of three licenses issued for marble quarrying totaling 30 hectares (74 acres) in Lumphat, said its CEO Bou Vorsak via email. He said he is aware that other license applications are being processed, with most interest at sites within Veal Kambor CPA, but added that he does not have further information.

Satellite imagery shows that, by early 2021, marble extraction was already underway in the area, including within the conservation zone of Lumphat.

MoE rangers stationed only 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) from the quarries said most of the companies have since gone bankrupt and halted operations — apart from one: CHHC Investment Co.

Mongabay, however, observed a new sign installed at one of the quarries between visits in March and October 2025 that listed Howpin (Cambodia) Co. as holding nearly 100 hectares (247 acres) for all business activities and 10 hectares (25 acres) for marble extraction. The sign marked areas slated for expansion less than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from CHHC’s operations.

CHHC received its concession in Lumphat’s conservation zone in 2020, valid through September 2022, according to Ministry of Mines and Energy (MoME) licensing documents, signed by the previous MoME minister Suy Sem.

Although there are no public records indicating CHHC’s license has been extended past 2022, Mongabay observed the firm cutting stone and transporting blocks in late October 2025. A truck driver said the load, which carried the same markers as processed blocks observed at the quarries, was destined for a client in another province.

A security guard at the CHHC mine entrance, who declined to give his name, confirmed that quarrying was still underway. He said another quarry near Howpin’s site also belonged to CHHC. Operations there didn’t appear active, but drone footage captured thousands of marble blocks and a handful of idle excavators scattered across water-filled pits.

Satellite imagery also showed quarry ponds gradually expanding from 2022 until present day at CHHC’s site. Operations at the Howpin site could be seen kicking off only in late 2024, when they began felling trees before cutting a pit in early 2025.

Well-connected owners

According to Cambodia’s business registry, CHHC is led by chairman Leng Srouyheang, a petrol magnate from a well-connected tycoon family. Srouyheang and his siblings also direct a trading firm, Thary Trade, flagged as “high risk” in an Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) report on illegal timber exports to Vietnam. CHHC has meanwhile donated thousands of dollars to the Cambodian Red Cross, a humanitarian group critics say serves as a proxy for the ruling party.

Srouyheang’s father and two brothers are all Oknhas, an honorific for tycoons who donate $500,000 or more to the government.

Howpin’s chairman, Tang Kuonghow, moves in the same ranks. Also an Oknha, he controls multiple mining outfits, including Cambodia’s largest granite operation in Kratie province, where two workers died in July 2025 in a rock-face collapse.

Kuonghow has likewise donated thousands of dollars to the Cambodian Red Cross.

Another firm, LHCT PH Xing Investment Co., chaired by Srouyheang’s brother Oknha Leng Srouyhang was also allocated about 100 hectares (247 acres) inside Veal Kambor CPA for stone mining in 2020, according a signed list of attendees at a site inspection. It’s unclear if Srouyhang’s firm actually mined in the area, if it’s partnered with his brother’s firm, or if an environmental and social risk assessment (ESIA) was ever conducted.

CHHC and Howpin also do not have publicly available ESIA documents.

Diepart, the geo-agronomist, said he would not be surprised if there was never one.

“The decree that paved the way for environmental impact assessments is pretty old and inadequate,” he said referring to the 1999 decree. “From records, we know that ESIAs are usually financed by the investors, or carried out by people that have a direct interest to please the investors.”

“The real environmental or social problems are often not properly monitored, documented and raised in impact assessments, even if the sub-decree says you need to have it verified by a third party,” Diepart added, citing previous cases of communities affected by other economic land concessions (ELCs) not being properly consulted or having given consent.

“At the moment, there is a legal vacuum on how this is supposed to work,” he said.

Impact assessment or not, the environmental consequences posed by open-pit stone mining are no mystery. Veal Kambor CPA is also one of the few known nesting grounds in recent years for the lesser adjutant, an IUCN Red Listed bird.

Mongabay was unable to locate the legally required assessments despite repeated requests to officials overseeing mining and environmental issues.

Reporters sent a detailed list of questions to the minister of mining and energy Keo Ratanak; to officials at the environment ministry’s Environmental Impact Assessment Department, who were listed on the attendance list for LHCT PH Xing Investment’s assessment brief; and to the environment ministry’s Ratanakiri department director Thong Bunsong, asking for clarity on why mining concessions were granted in parts of a CPA and a conservation zone, and if ESIAs were ever conducted and could be provided. As of press time, no responses were received.

Calls to the numbers and emails to the addresses listed for Srouyheang, Srouyhang and Kuonghow on the business registry, too, went unanswered.

Mongabay visited CHHC’s office on the outskirts of Phnom Penh in late November 2025. One woman, who declined to be named or confirm if she was employed with CHHC while exiting the office, did confirm that it was the firm’s official office and said no one was working that day. Just across the street sits a Leng family mansion sporting gold-tinted windows and a baroque-style gate. No family member was home during Mongbay’s visit, but a neighbor confirmed it belonged to the family.

NatureLife Cambodia CEO Vorsak said the organization “[has] not been provided access to any ESIA that may exist for these operations,” referring reporters to the government.

Yet, far from ministries and mansions, the Veal Kambor CPA’s benefactors were left to absorb the fallout.

Some residents, like Vorn Pang and Sao Thorn, said they received no compensation. Other members of the Veal Kambor CPA received meager compensations of $250 for their rice or cashew farms, according to Dum Lean, who was the community chief of Sre Chhuk village during the takeover, but who could not verify which companies paid.

Lean also said that, in a 2021 meeting, MoE officials told the CPA’s leaders, who represent dozens of families across Sre Chhuk and nearby Thmey village, that the companies themselves would conduct ESIAs.

Local anger also bubbled over around that time, with villagers accusing local officials of colluding to undermine the community zone and handing over parts of it to private interests without their consent, according to a local media report.

For many families that relied on Veal Kambor, the quarries were only the latest intrusion.

Lean said several households in Sre Chhuk and Thmey villages lost fields due to earlier economic land concessions granted to subsidiaries of the Vietnamese conglomerate HAGL (later taken over by Vietnam’s THACO, which did not respond to an email request for comment).

HAGL has faced multiple allegations in Cambodia of land grabs, undercompensation and land clearing inside or near protected areas.

Looming Flood

Vast monoculture blocks have already remade large swaths of Lumphat. Another threat comes in the form of a planned hydropower dam on the Srepok River, which runs through the middle of the sanctuary.

The proposed 376-megawatt Lower Srepok 3 hydropower dam (LSP3), backed by one of Cambodia’s most powerful Oknhas and partnered with Chinese firms, would flood a core zone of Lumphat, the Veal Kambor CPA and the marble mining sites, while making the edges of the sanctuary’s nearly 135,000-hectare (333,590-acre) REDD+ project porous. It would also submerge parts of the Srepok Wildlife Sanctuary just south of Lumphat.

The project’s ESIA was reportedly rejected earlier this year by the government, which requested substantial revisions, though the details remain opaque.

Vorsak said NatureLife later prepared its own assessment of risks to threatened species, ecosystems, community livelihoods and the REDD+ project at the MoE’s request after a public consultation in March 2025.

Mongabay requested access to this assessment, but Vorsak said NatureLife could not release it, noting it would “not be appropriate to share externally at the present time.”

For conservationists and community advocates, the REDD+ project remains the closest thing to a safeguard, even as other carbon projects across Cambodia have drawn allegations of human rights abuses and undermined rural and Indigenous peoples’ customary lands.

Yet, for Lumphat residents like Pang and Thorn, and CPA members such as Lean who have watched protections slip and concessions multiply, the work goes on. They still patrol the forest three times a month, logging forest crimes with the little authority they have left.

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Isabel Esterman Editor

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