Logging operations uncovered at Cambodian senator’s dam in the Cardamoms

“They are clearing the forest for the reservoir,” said Phan, a resident of O’Soam commune in Cambodia’s western province of Pursat. “These days, every few days, there is only one timber truck because it is the raining season, but during the dry season, there are three or four timber trucks [per day].”

Phan, who spoke to Mongabay by phone, requested that neither his full name nor his village name be published for fear of retribution from the developers of the 70-megawatt (MW) Stung Russei Chrum Kandal hydropower dam, also known as the Middle Russei Chrum River dam.

Construction on the dam, which spans the Russei Chrum River in neighboring Koh Kong province, began in 2023 inside Phnom Kravanh National Park, one of Cambodia’s largest protected rainforests. The dam is one of many being built in the Cardamoms as Cambodia pushes for “clean” energy security, but recent satellite imagery indicates that large-scale logging is happening beyond the authorized construction sites.

Access to the site, Phan added, has been restricted and checkpoints are closely guarded by armed men in Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) uniforms.

“We used to enter for fishing and laying fishing equipment, yet we are not allowed to enter anymore,” he said. “They have checkpoints, they have troops — they say the troops came to protect the forests. But the company set them up as security guards; we cannot get in or get out.”

The dam’s developers are permitted to clear forest within a 2,898-hectare (7,161-acre) area that the dam’s reservoir will eventually flood. However, satellite imagery indicates that a sawmill has been established just outside of the reservoir area. From here, an extensive network of small roads sprawls out, clearing trees as far as 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) outside the designated reservoir construction site. None of the forest clearance outside of the reservoir area matches with publicly available plans for the dam, and all of it occurs within legally protected forests.

Spanning more than 926,000 hectares (2.3 million acres), about three times the size of Yosemite National Park in the US, Phnom Kravanh is one of Cambodia’s last, best strongholds of old-growth forest. It is home to a host of endangered species, including the smooth-coated otter (Lutrogale perspicillata) listed as vulnerable on the IUCN’s Red List, as well as the endangered Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), the vulnerable Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus) and the critically endangered Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica).

Phnom Kravanh is also the site of Cambodia’s controversial plan to reintroduce tigers into the wild, but the habitats of these animals, along with the traditional hunting grounds of the Indigenous communities that reside throughout the Cardamom Mountains, face increasing pressure from hydropower development across Phnom Kravanh National Park and the adjoining Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary. Five dams already operate across these two protected areas, and five more are currently under construction, with planned reservoirs that will collectively span more than 15,000 hectares (37,066 acres).

Around March 2025, a clearing north of the planned reservoir at the Russei Chrum Kandal construction site became visible on satellite imagery. Spanning about 14 hectares (35 acres), the clearing bears the hallmarks of a timber processing facility: stacks resembling sawn timber, and long, narrow buildings akin to those that house band saws typically used for cutting logs. Nearby, a large road has been cut through the forest, crossing the Koh Kong-Pursat provincial border, the imagery suggests. From this road, multiple smaller tracks can be seen spindling off into forested areas.

Mongabay shared the satellite imagery with two independent forestry experts with extensive experience monitoring forest crimes in Cambodia. Both confirmed that the imagery suggests selective logging, where timber traders seek out the oldest, most valuable species to fell rather than clear-cutting the forest.

One expert wished to remain anonymous, citing their ongoing work in Cambodia, but the other, Marcus Hardtke, noted that the pattern became visible during the dry seasons of 2025 and 2026 and closely resembled a pattern of forest clearance he said he had observed in the same period at the Stung Meteuk dam, which is being built in Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary.

Checkpoints are also visible in the satellite imagery from Russei Chrum Kandal, which — coupled with the reported presence of RCAF personnel and restricted access to the dam site — suggests forest clearance could not happen without the dam developer’s knowledge.

Likewise, further south in Koh Kong, the site of the 100 MW Veal Thmor Kambot dam displays similar signs of illegal logging, according to satellite imagery. What appears to be a sawmill resembling the one seen at the Russei Chrum Kandal dam site is established in the same time frame. There are also snaking paths extending up to 5 km (3 mi) from the boundaries of the planned reservoir site visible in satellite imagery.

The Veal Thmor Kambot dam is situated inside both the Phnom Kravanh National Park and the Southern Cardamoms REDD+ project area, the flagship conservation project of local NGO Wildlife Alliance, which has long faced scrutiny for alleged human rights abuses while failing to prevent the development of hydropower projects that drive deforestation.

John Willis, CEO of Wildlife Alliance, did not respond to written questions sent by Mongabay.

Minister of Environment Eang Sophalleth read but did not respond to questions sent by Mongabay via Telegram, a messaging app popular with Cambodian officials. Sophalleth has previously issued logging bans at the construction sites of hydropower dams where illegal timber felling was suspected of happening.

The Cambodians stripping the Cardamoms’ forests

The silence of both the government and its conservation NGO partners is part of a broader pattern, according to Hardtke, the forest crimes expert.

He cited the vast tracts of rosewood logged during hydropower development in Pursat province between 2009-2012 by companies linked to Try Pheap, a close advisor of then-Prime Minister Hun Sen who has since been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for alleged corruption.

“The conservation groups nominally managing the affected protected areas didn’t intervene actively, being controlled by a complicit Ministry of Environment, and, at best, were trying to record the illicit timber flows, often over years, but they never officially published related data,” recalled Hardtke.

Khmer Electrical Power was listed as the developer of both the Russei Chrum Kandal dam and the Veal Thmor Kambot dam in 2023. The company was looking for staff in the Russei Chrum area as recently as May 2026.

Khmer Electrical Power is part of Anco Brothers, a conglomerate run by Kok An, a senator for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. Mongabay sent questions to email addresses listed for An’s companies in Cambodia’s commerce records, but none had replied at the time of publication.

An’s business portfolio encompasses tobacco, water and electrical utilities, casinos and real estate, but he is perhaps most famous for his alleged involvement in the human trafficking and online frauds that fueled scam compounds across Cambodia and saw him sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in April 2026.

Just months later, in July, the Thai government issued an arrest warrant for An, who previously had close ties to Thailand, dubbing him the “Godfather of Poipet”, a town on the Thai-Cambodian border notorious for gambling and from where An’s Crown Casino Resort was suspected to host cyber-scam operations. Thai authorities seized some 560 million baht (roughly $17 million) worth of An’s assets and revoked his residence visa, along with the Thai citizenship of his three children. An’s son is married to the daughter of Ly Yong Phat, another prominent ruling party senator, who has also been sanctioned by the U.S. government for his alleged role in cyber-scams and who is also building a dam in the Cardamoms linked to illegal logging operations.

Kok An, Ly Yong Phat and Minister of Energy and Mines Keo Rottanak were all spotted at the December 2024 closing of a Russei Chrum River ceremony to mark a milestone in the dam’s progress.

Just months after this ceremony, stacks of timber and networks of small roads began to appear, according to the satellite imagery, showing deforestation far beyond the boundaries approved for the reservoir construction.

While Mongabay has not been able to independently trace the movements of that timber, local media reported in July 2026 that trucks belonging to Khmer Electrical Power were stopped and searched in Kandal province. The trucks had been permitted to transport saplings, but were instead found to be laden with grade 1 timber – the second most valuable grade in Cambodia beneath luxury timber.

It’s unclear whether this timber was transported from either of the dams, but according to Hardtke, the exploitation of licenses to clear reservoirs should come as no surprise given the long track record in Cambodia.

“Every hydropower construction project in Cambodia in the last two decades has been massively abused for large-scale, organized illegal logging operations by regime cronies, especially in the Cardamom Mountains,” Hardtke said.

Banner image: Smooth-coated otters (Lutrogale perspicillata). Image by JJ Harrison – Own work via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Cite this article

Gerald Flynn (2026). Logging operations uncovered at Cambodian senator’s dam in the Cardamoms. Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-328129