The suspects, aged between 22 and 44 years old, were arrested by a fast-deployment unit of park officials and troops from the Second Army Area. They were spotted carrying 34 planks of the protected hardwood in a forest behind Ban Lampiak village in Tambon Lampiak. The five suspects told the district chief that they were hired by a Vietnamese businessman to sneak across the border to fell Siamese rosewood trees and smuggle the wood back across the border to Cambodia. Conservationists warn that Siamese rosewood trees could be extinct by 2026, after an epidemic of illegal logging driven mainly by demand from China has stripped Thailand’s forests of the species. In 2015 seven Thai forest rangers were killed as they tried to halt illegal Siamese rosewood logging.

Source: The Nation Bangkok June 04, 2019 04:07 UTC