Representatives of 50 families in Ratanakkiris Andong Meas district filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc yesterday alleging that a Vietnamese concessionaire is responsible for destroying about 50 hectares of cashew plantations.

Sorl Penh, 58, a representative for the villagers from Nhang commune, said yesterday that locals had been relying on the land for nearly 20 years but had been unable to stop Company 72 from clearing community land since March 14.

About 20 to 30 of us tried to stop their vehicles. They stopped while we were there, and they continued clearing when we left. We do not know what to do since the authorities also could not find a solution for this [dispute], he said.

Andong Meas district governor Norng Darith said district authorities had attempted to solve the issue three times already but had failed.

Some villagers stopped using the land eight or 10 years ago, but when the company tried to clear it, they stopped the company and said it was their own, Darith said.

Company 72 has already been implicated in a land dispute involving the clearing of some 10 per cent of a 1,000-hectare forest in neighbouring OYadav district, said Chhay Thy, provincial coordinator for rights group Adhoc.

This company did not obey the policy of economic land concessions, because it has cleared community forest and farmlands. But still there has been no legal measure set to punish them, Thy said, adding that the firm was overstepping its 6,000-hectare concession in OYadav.

Contact information for Company 72 is not publicly available, but OYadav district governor Dak Sar confirmed with the Post in late March that the companys concession partly overlapped with the villagers forest.

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Cashew plantations destroyed

ABC The Northern Territory Lands Department is investigating the clearing of this site in Berrimah.

A Darwin-based environmental group has called on the Northern Territory Government to prosecute a company that has cleared four hectares of forest.

Leslie Alford from the Rapid Creek Land Care group says the Lands Department has ordered a stop to the illegal clearing.

The land is on the corner of Amy Johnson Avenue and Boulter Road in Berrimah.

The department says an application is required prior to the clearing of any land on the site.

It says no application has been received to date.

Ms Alford says the Government has to prosecute to deter similar action in the future.

She says it also needs to order rehabilitation of the site.

"It was a 100 per cent bushland, part of it wetland, part of it transitional communities and part of it woodland," she said.

"But it was a beautiful block."

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Rapid Creek Land Care group dismayed by land clearing in Berrimah

Workers have started clearing land to widen the bottleneck in LPGA Boulevard near Derbyshire Road in Holly Hill.

Every day, Hamid Zomorodian experiences the traffic bottleneck near the intersection of LPGA Boulevard and Derbyshire Road in Holly Hill.

Vehicles race to and from Interstate 95 on a four-lane, divided highway only to have to slow down and merge into two lanes before hitting another stretch of four-lane travel.

In the next year or so, that will change. Volusia County which widened the stretch between Derbyshire and Nova Road several years ago used eminent domain to acquire several key parcels to finish widening the remaining two-lane stretch.

Motorists have noticed clearing activities on some of the lots, while electronic message boards signal construction work is expected to start this week.

County Engineer Gerald Brinton said Florida Power & Light is planning to move power poles and the county anticipates advertising for bids for the widening job within 90 days. The county has more than $3 million budgeted for the project, which will widen the road for less than a half-mile between Jimmy Ann Drive and Derbyshire.

I think its a very good idea, said Zomorodian, who owns a car sales and service business on LPGA farther east, at the corner of Ridgewood Avenue, and lives in Port Orange. In the short run, some businesses might be disrupted, but in the long run, it might be beneficial for everyone.

According to Volusia County traffic engineering data, an average of 17,300 vehicles traveled each day along LPGA Boulevard between Jimmy Ann Drive and Derbyshire Road in 2012. In comparison, the average daily traffic count that same year for the stretch of International Speedway Boulevard between Nova Road and Martin Luther King Boulevard was 24,500.

Renee Carpenter, an employee at one of those businesses, Southern Comfort Protective Systems, said she hopes the job wont drag out like the one farther east did. That took forever, she said.

The contractor, Built-Rite Construction of Pierson, had issues with removing soil, which extended the project to 18 months in length and led to a legal tussle with the county and Daytona Beach over its payment. In the end, the county and city ended up adding $400,000 to the $2.26 million job.

Original post:
County set to widen LPGA Blvd.

Volvo 160 Excavator Loading Big stumps
loading up 2 big stumps from a land clearing job.

By: letsdig18

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Volvo 160 Excavator Loading Big stumps - Video

Surgical Land Clearing-drone footage of Black, Al. project
Equipment-Terex PT 110 forestry and Loftness G3 mulching head-quadco planer blades. Video from Phantom Vision 2.

By: John Pierce

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Surgical Land Clearing-drone footage of Black, Al. project - Video

ABC The Government says the legislation changes are part of its vision to expand Queensland's agricultural economy.

The Queensland Government is under fire from conservationists over the granting of new land clearing permits in the north of the state.

The Wilderness Society says weakening of vegetation management laws last year has led to large-scale clearing applications.

Campaigner Gavan McFadzean says the biggest example is a permit granted to Strathmore Station, a big cattle station in the gulf savannah country near Georgetown.

"We've discovered through a tip-off that [land clearing] is now broadscale and at an alarming rate," he said.

"One of the biggest examples of that we've discovered is in the Gilbert catchment at Strathmore, where an application for 30,000 hectares of clearing - that's about 134 Brisbane CBDs of clearing - has been granted."

Mr McFadzean says the legislative amendments are undermining the land clearing legislation introduced in Queensland nearly 20 years ago.

"During the 1980s and 1990s Queensland was clearing at an alarming rate, it was actually an emerging environmental crisis," he said.

"If Queensland was a country, in the early 90s it would have been one of the worst land clearers in the world, on par with Brazil, the Congo Basin, Borneo and Indonesia.

"It was through the 1996 native Vegetation Act introduced by the Beattie government that land clearing was brought under control."

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Queensland Government under fire from Wilderness Society over land clearing permits in state's north

Gohong, Indonesia - Anang Sugito, 47, stands in front of a 100-strong crowd pointing to a hand-drawn map on the wall. His voice cracks when he talks about the future of Dayak village.

"If we sell off our forests, our children will be landless. They will have their own children, and what would they do?" asked Sugito, 47, the village secretary for the 7,000 household strong community of Gohong, and father of five children ranging from 10 to 18-years old.

In a country where indigenous activists and leaders defending their land are sometimes intimidated, harassed, and killed by palm oil companies and their collaborators, many Dayak villagers - who have practiced shifting cultivation in forests in Central Kalimantan for hundreds of years - do not understand why they have to go to court to defend forests against conversion to mono-crop palm plantations.

"It is only natural, and as it should be, that we do everything in our power to hold onto our land," said Abdul Muin, an ethnic Dayak hailing from the neighbouring village of Sei Dusun, where villagers have filed lawsuits against oil palm corporations with concessions to 11,000 hectares of peatland forest.

While so far 11 companies have had their permits revoked as a result, the country hosts more than 2,500 local suppliers and Muin said it is a constant struggle to fend them off.

There is no way we can cultivate livelihoods in this environment. Oil palm plantations make everything dead, even there are no more birds.

- Abdul Muin, ethnic Dayak villager

Demand for palm oil and energy in Indonesia continues to drive deforestation and displacement of local communities in a country that has already lost 64 million hectares of tropical forests to agribusiness in the past five decades, according to the World Research Institute (WRI), an international research organisation focusing on sustainable energy and conservation.

In recent years, a billion dollar bilateral agreement with Norway has encouraged the Indonesian government to issue moratoriums on forest clearance to protect its carbon-loaded peatland.

Confusion over land tenure, however, continues to cloud forest protection, with potentially devastating environmental impacts on Indonesia's remaining 22 million hectares of peatland forests, which globally make up five percent of peatland area, according to the National Council on Climate Change.

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Palm oil fuels Indonesia deforestation

Surgical land clearing-mowing down a magnolia
DJI Phantom Vision 2 video--forestry mulching.

By: John Pierce

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Surgical land clearing-mowing down a magnolia - Video

Surgical land clearing-Patrick in high gear!
John #39;s drone. Aerial video w/ DJI Phantom vision 2.

By: John Pierce

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Surgical land clearing-Patrick in high gear! - Video

Surgical land clearing-Drone video
John #39;s drone-video with DJI Phantom Vision 2.

By: John Pierce

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Surgical land clearing-Drone video - Video