Cambodia's government, facing growing protests by villagers and warnings about disappearing wilderness, suspended the granting of land to domestic and foreign companies on Monday in a move to curb forced evictions and illegal logging.Rights groups in the impoverished but resource-rich Southeast Asian country said the temporary measure did not go far enough and a permanent ban was needed.The government said in the order, signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen, it would confiscate any concessions that involved the grabbing of villagers' land and illegal logging.

A Special Side-Event Presentation by the Prey Lang Community Network, Indigenous Active Rights Members, Organization to Promote Kuy Culture, and NGO Forum Cambodia.

This past weekend, the killing of activist Chut Wutty and his tireless efforts to protect the Prey Lang forest and the environment of Cambodia received some high profile coverage on a New York Times Blog. Hopefully this story will gain traction, and with international pressure, our demands for an investigation into Chut Wutty's shooting will be heard.

Chut Wutty, the Founder and Director of the Natural Resource Protection Group (NRPG), has been shot dead in an incident in Koh Kong province in which military police officer In Rattana is also said to have died today, 26 April 2012. The details of the incident in which the two men died remain unclear but their deaths have been confirmed by military police spokesman Kheng Tito. Wutty’s death has also been confirmed by his nephew, Chuon Phearum, as well as Koh Kong provincial military police chief, Thong Naron.

On April 16, it was announced from San Francisco that Evgenia Chirikova, one of the founders and organizers of the Defend Khimki Forest movement, based in Moscow, Russia, is the 2012 European winner of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. "EarthAction salutes Chirikova for her focused, persistent and effective work to protect this important forest on the outskirts of Moscow," says Lois Barber, EarthAction's Co-founder and Executive Director. Starting in July 2010 and throughout 2011, EarthAction rallied its global network in support of Chirikova's work to protect the Khimki Forest from being the site of a planned highway connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg. For its part, EarthAction issued a series of global Action Alerts mobilizing people and organizations worldwide to take action in support of the Khimki forest and the local organizers in Moscow.

EarthAction, a global network of over 2,000 organizations in 160 countries, and Cultural Survival, an advocacy organization for Indigenous Peoples’ rights, have begun a worldwide campaign to protect the Prey Lang forest in Cambodia—its people, its trees, its life. The international campaign supports and complements the local efforts of the Prey Lang Community Network, a group of mostly Indigenous people whose villages surround the Prey Lang forest and whose livelihoods depend on the forest’s resources. Prey Lang, about the size of Rhode Island, is the last large primary forest of its kind on the Indochina peninsula.

Lawmakers have proposed narrowing the planned highway through the Khimki Forest from four lanes to two lanes, but that simply wouldn't be enough to save the rich wildlife, endangered species, and beloved birch trees from deforestation. The Movement to Defend Khimki Forest is now filling a lawsuit against the highway builders, PO 'DorInzhStroyProyect' LLC in an effort to save the threatened ecosystem.

In this International Year of the Forest, please help save Cambodia's Prey Lang (pronounced ‘Pray Long’) forest, the last large primary forest of its kind on the Indochinese peninsula. About 200,000 people, mostly indigenous Kuy, live in or around the forest and are dependent on it for their livelihoods and culture.