Thailands military coup gives an unexpected boost to wildlife July 9, 2014 By Tim Redford, Freeland Foundation, Thailand One would expect a military coup to be bad thing for society, liberty, business and the environment. But, here in Thailand, this most recent coup has been a boon for nature and a shock for organized criminals involved in poaching, trafficking and logging. The military has very vocally stated that the environment is one Thailand’s most important assets and to secure a safe future for wildlife and forests they have acted swiftly and decisively. The army has bolstered forest-ranger patrols in the parks to deter and prevent poaching and has conducted both spontaneous searches of premises and companies believed to be involved in nature crime and set up vehicle check-points along wildlife trafficking routes. This has led to a massive increase in arrests, changing the situation entirely. The most recent development is the use of anti-money laundering laws to confiscate assets of criminals involved in logging or wildlife trafficking. Today I was in one of the tiger parks where TigerTime supports the tiger protection project. This location has been subject to massive Siamese rosewood poaching. Previously loggers even cut rosewood trees next to roads in the park and carved logging trails through prime forest to get the timber out. These trails have now started to get overgrown and no new sign of logging is to be found. This is not to say it’s been completely stopped, but it’s certainly a whole lot harder for loggers to conduct their activities when the Thai army is after them. The tigers now have their home back. Perhaps Thailand may consider following Nepal’s lead, where the military works alongside the forest rangers in all the country’s parks and last year prevented any elephants or tigers being poached.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 16:06:50 +0000
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