Thai plan to redraw boundaries of tiger reserve sparks concern and criticism
Thai plan to redraw boundaries of tiger reserve sparks concern and criticism
Carolyn Cowan, Mongabay
July 22, 2024
See link
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/07/thai-plan-to-redraw-boundaries-of-tiger-reserve-sparks-concern-and-criticism/
for photos.
Government plans to remove protections for a portion of Thailand’s Thap Lan
National Park, a core area within one of mainland Southeast Asia’s last
intact tracts of forest, could trigger knock-on consequences for protected
areas across the country, conservationists warn.
Thap Lan National Park is one of the most ecologically rich parts of a
network of five protected areas that together form the Dong Phayayen-Khao
Yai Forest Complex (DPKY-FC), a green expanse of steep, forested hills
bisecting Thailand’s intensively developed plains to the northeast of
Bangkok. The DPKY Forest Complex was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage
Site in 2005 for its exceptional biodiversity, and Thap Lan itself was
designated a national park in 1981.
New proposals to issue title deeds for land within the reserve’s boundaries
come from the prime ministers’ office, which says the process is necessary
to settle historic boundary disputes with local communities who were living
in the area long before it was established as a national park, according to
local media reports.
However, conservation groups and Thailand’s Department of National Parks,
Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) have slammed the initiative, saying
it would effectively remove 42,000 hectares (104,000 acres), roughly
equivalent to one-fifth, of currently protected land from the iconic
reserve. A recent public hearing process led by the DNP has led to
widespread public criticism of the plans.
A Hotspot of Conservation Hope
Besides its role as a central component of the DPKY-FC World Heritage Site,
Thap Lan National Park is perhaps best known as the home of one of
Thailand’s two remaining breeding populations of Indochinese tigers
(Panthera tigris corbetti). Driven extinct in nearby Cambodia, Laos and
Vietnam by habitat loss, poaching and overhunting of prey species, tigers
hang on eastern Thailand in Thap Lan. Surveys in 2020 estimated roughly 20
tigers live in the Thap Lan-Pang Sida Tiger Conservation Landscape, making
this corner of the DPKY-FC the sole hope of tiger recovery in this part of
Thailand.
Thap Lan National Park is also crucial for conserving Thailand’s largest
terrestrial resident: the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). The national
park’s forests sustain the country’s second-largest population of the
megaherbivores after the reserves that make up the country’s Western Forest
Complex, close to the border with Myanmar.
Moreover, in part due to strong investment in ranger patrols and protection
through the DNP, many other species, such as clouded leopards, gaurs,
bantengs, hornbills and several species of gibbons continue to inhabit the
forest complex.
A Worrying Precedent
Critics of the land reform plans say they’re particularly worried that
carving up such a significant portion of a key national park could set a
precedent for similar action in other protected areas in Thailand, a trend
that could see a reduction in the land area managed for conservation at a
time when Thailand has committed to area-based global biodiversity goals,
including protecting 30% of the country’s land, freshwater and marine areas
by 2030.
The Seub Nakhasathien Foundation, a Bangkok-based NGO, says the removal of
protected status from parts of Thap Lan National Park could undermine
efforts by Thailand’s tiger specialists to restore the big cats to
neighboring Khao Yai National Park, a conservation goal that in part
spurred the recent construction of a multimillion-dollar wildlife corridor
spanning a major highway through the area.
The interface between the two flagship national parks is not just important
for tigers, Ornyupa Sangkamarn, head of academic affairs at the foundation,
told Mongabay in an email. “Many types of wildlife cross between the
forests, such as elephants, [gaurs], serows, deer, barking deer, leopard
cats, dhole, clouded leopard and Asian black bear … in the area that will
be revoked,” Ornyupa said. “Connecting the forest [corridor] may not be
successful” should the revocations go ahead.
Earlier this week, a coalition of international NGOs operating in Thailand
issued an open letter to the minister of environment calling on government
agencies to reconsider the proposals. The letter, issued by the Thailand
offices of WWF, WCS, Panthera and Freeland, says the revocation of national
park land “threatens the ecological integrity of the Forest Complex for
generations to come, and sets a troubling precedent, empowering parties
opposed to natural area protection to advocate for similar actions
elsewhere.”
In the letter, the NGOs urge officials to “do no harm” to the national park
in their efforts to strike a balance between environmental protection,
community rights and commercial interests. “Moving forward with a
degazettement of this scale will undoubtedly jeopardize Thailand’s
well-earned status as the regional leader in biodiversity conservation,”
the letter says, “and would clearly be counter to the nation’s commitments
under the Convention on Biological Diversity.”
Multiple Land Claims
Meanwhile, local communities and legal experts say the government must
press ahead with plans to resolve the land conflicts, which they say stems
from oversights made during the initial demarcation of the reserve boundary
in 1981, when authorities encompassed land historically inhabited and
farmed by local communities within the reserve boundaries.
Provisions under Thailand’s National Park Act and the Wildlife Protection
and Reservation Act require the government to accommodate sustainable local
community livelihoods within protected area management. While surveys,
consultations and mapping programs to resolve the disputes in Thap Lan have
been ongoing for decades, the situation is yet to be resolved. In 2000, a
new reserve boundary was drafted following joint mapping surveys and
consultations between communities and government agencies, but it never
passed into law due to mapping discrepancies between government agencies
and successive administrations.
Pornpana Kuaycharoen, founder and coordinator of Land Watch Thai, said a
lot of land conflict occurs in Thailand because community rights are
typically overlooked by a land tenure system focused on state and private
interests. “When the national park was designated, the communities were
ignored by the state,” she said. “When [national park authorities]
announced the conservation area, they enclosed the villages, so the
inhabitants were immediately breaking the law.”
According to Pornpana, in addition to land historically inhabited by
villagers in the northwest of Thap Lan National Park, sections of the
northeast and western reserve margin are also under consideration to be
axed from the reserve. The state gave plots within this area to landless
farmers under historical amnesty agreements issued during the 1970s, she
said.
“These disputed lands are not forest,” Pornpana said. “[They are] forestry
concessions that were granted a long time ago, that means the trees were
cut long ago. It is inhabited villages and farmland,” she said, adding that
villagers are not cutting the forest, merely trying to make a living on
their land.
Ornyupa said she and her colleagues at Seub Nakhasathien are not against
restoring land rights to villagers and farmers who were living in the area
prior to the park’s designation or who have legitimate claims to the land.
However, the foundation noted that records indicate these lands amount to
roughly 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres), less than one-quarter of the land
in question.
According to Ornyupa, much of the remainder of the land under consideration
was forest as recently as two decades ago, when the 2000 reserve boundaries
were marked. Now, it has been built on by “outside developers” who have
found ways of bypassing regulations that restrict the sale and exchange of
state-protected land, she said.
Prawatsart Chanthep, superintendent of Thap Lan National Park, said the DNP
has lodged a total of 552 ongoing lawsuits against such developers who have
constructed tourism ventures and resorts on land within the reserve
boundaries. He said he’s concerned that if the government grants land
titles to such developers, it will make it very difficult to control such
expansion within the reserve. In other words, the proposals undermine DNP
staff’s capacity to manage the site for conservation.
Both Ornyupa and Prawatsart said that treating such recently encroached
land with the same procedures to resolve the long-standing disputes with
communities who have legitimate claims to land within the park could
backfire. It could effectively legitimize claims to land that has been
illegally developed. “It is well-known that if the legal conditions of the
area are changed, it will be more difficult to control these developers,”
Prawatsart said.
“It will become a domino for other conservation areas, with people making
claims like this instead of [facing] legal consequences,” Ornyupa said,
adding that dealing with land that comprises important wildlife corridors
like Thap Lan National Park in this way is “a pathway to endless
human-wildlife conflict.”
Prawatsart said the DNP acknowledges that villagers were living in the area
prior to the existence of Thap Lan National Park, “but not as much as at
present.” He called for further surveys to map and control legitimate
historical village and farm plots as well as “thorough examination of the
qualifications of land plot holders [in order] to consider granting rights
as appropriate.”
Of utmost importance is closing loopholes that currently enable land to
change hands and be sold, he said. This is crucial to ensure land remains
as farmland under the management of legitimate holders, rather than being
converted to private developments.
“If the boundary of Thap Lan National Park has to be redetermined, it must
be in accordance with the rules and principles of Thai law,” he said. “The
benefits [should] go to the real people in order to provide a correct
guideline for managing forest protected areas in Thailand.”
World Heritage Implications
Conservation NGOs as well as campaigners at Seub Nakhasathien say that,
ultimately, the land reforms could endanger the DPKY Forest Complex’s World
Heritage status, which is due for review by UNESCO’s World Heritage
Committee in 2025. They say that axing such a substantial portion of the
national park might not only raise concerns from the committee over the
conservation value of the site, but could also negatively impact its
willingness to approve future world heritage site proposals from Thailand.
According to Mizuki Murai, a senior coordinator for the IUCN World Heritage
Team, the conservation body that provides technical advice to the World
Heritage Committee, the 2025 assessment will take into account several
factors that pose threats to the DPKY landscape, including tourism
infrastructure development, agricultural encroachment, road construction,
illegal logging and poaching.
When the park was first inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2005, the
Thai government indicated that it had plans to adjust the boundaries,
excluding 43,773 hectares (108,165 acres) of degraded land while bringing
an additional 17,727 hectares (43,804 acres) of forest reserves into the
complex. But these boundary shifts were never finalized.
Murai said the current plant to excise land from Thap Lan National Park
likely relates to those 2005 plans, but the IUCN team hasn’t yet received a
formal proposal. Such a proposal would have to follow strict guidelines
under the World Heritage Convention to avoid triggering a downgrading of
the DPKY-FC to inscription on the “List of World Heritage in Danger,” she
said.
“All areas within a World Heritage site are required under the Convention
to have adequate legal protection and be effectively managed, and there are
a range of different expectations set out in the Convention and its
Operational Guidelines,” Murai told Mongabay in an email. “Therefore, any
proposal to amend the boundary of protected areas within a World Heritage
site should firstly be considered by the World Heritage Committee before
any such changes are made at the national level.”
In 2023, the World Heritage Committee ruled that the boundary adjustments
in discussion at the time constituted a “significant boundary modification”
under the convention. Accordingly, the government of Thailand would be
expected to make such a submission, Murai said. “The evaluation of a
significant boundary modification by IUCN is a thorough process, including
a field visit, consultations on site, and desk reviews,” she added.