The jungle’s not a peaceful place (but the silence here is resounding)

By John Roberts
25 April 2012 04:24:00

You may remember, earlier in the year, the furore surrounding the discovery that elephants were being hunted within Thailand’s National Protected Area system both for their ivory and for their meat.  The discovery bought into focus something that regular readers of this column will have known has been common practice in one form or another for years, the smuggling of baby elephants from the wild and from our neighbouring countries in order to entertain tourists or be taken to the streets, there to lucratively beg.

An even greater furore erupted when the Government decided to try and check the paperwork of every captive elephant in Thailand and the credentials of those who make money from them, as there is still no elephant camp licensing system this included asking for land ownership or lease documents from Phuket to Chiang Mai and, as far as I can tell, a visit by one or other relevant authority to every commercial elephant camp in Thailand.

This lead to multiple visits to certain camps (some of whom loudly protested that the fact they lacked paperwork, had failed to follow the law, should be ignored as they are obviously on the side of the angels - ironically, having failed to follow the relatively simple laws already in place some then marched on Parliament calling for tougher laws), camps without campaigning friends had their unregistered elephants and land taken, our friends at the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre were suddenly handed, without the chance to quarantine and choose, fifty plus elephants without mahouts or extra funding; just told to care for them.

One that had arrived with tetanus died and the furore erupted again, the owner of the elephant (despite photographic evidence to the contrary) claimed she’d handed over a healthy, fat, loved & cared for elephant, another that arrived with tetanus, others that had come with other diseases, were cared for in a Herculean effort by the TECC vets and recovered.  But those who love a furore (particularly those with access to the furore creating blogs and petitions) screamed about the Government centres being nothing short of death camps for elephants.

Through it all the T.E.C.C. maintained a dignified silence and continued to do what they do better than anyone else in Thailand, possibly the world, they took sick elephants they hadn’t asked for and made them better.

To move on.

One function a blogger may perform, something I try to do for you, (aside from bringing sleep to the sleep deprived) is the trawling through the internet gossip, the semi scientific guff, the verbose desert of actual dry science so you don't have to, boiling it down to some usable information (peppered with opinion) that, together with one or two other reads, can help you form an idea of the big picture.  

I'll admit the boiling down, this month, almost got the best of me.

Believe me the word furore wouldn’t cover it (I’ve used it too much already today anyway) when it reached fever pitch.  It got even too much for gossip loving me, the jungle telegraph of e-mail updates, of Facebook timelines, of twitter feeds (all the stuff I do when I’m supposed to be writing reports on ‘mahout productivity’) got so repetitive in their outrage well, well, well, I actually almost stopped looking and did some proper work (a ‘sugarcane kilojoule baht efficiency capture rate’ report to be filed or filling in some forms for some form of acronym or something).

In the end it got so bad I had to go down the pub for a few days while the system flushed itself through.  There are still a few petitions out there claiming all sorts of, often misguided and untrue, things but the whole thing has calmed down a little.

But the sad news is that I’m losing my touch, in abandoning my post I missed some real news, something of serious impact to the species, something that I think we should all be addressing.  On April the 10th, it seems, the cabinet approved a project that will flood  areas of what is, according to the Bangkok Post & the Wildlife Conservation Society (who, thankfully did not leave their posts - or Posts even), one of the best protected National Parks in the country, one that contains elephants and tigers.

This is important, because, if you’ll remember as far as the top of the page the whole problem kicked off with the discovery that wild elephants in a poorly protected park were being hunted - if we are to believe the piece below the Park to be flooded is one where proper protection has, thus far, been achieved.  In the piece below, they also state their belief that elsewhere where dams have been built (&, once again, this is that most scientific of organisations, the Wildlife Conservation Society) those dams have facilitated poaching.  I’ve also heard compelling arguments that reservoirs increase human elephant conflict by splitting elephant populations, cutting elephant migration routes and also possibly, by providing a water supply year round, artificially increasing elephant populations to unsustainable levels while keeping them in one place (which may sound like a good thing but it throws out the balance of the eco-system and is also a good thing for poachers).

So my question is: where is the furore?  Why, when everyone felt compelled to ask the leader of the National Parks Department, Mr Damrong (a man whose name was, for awhile on the ele internet tantamount to that of Satan and was also multi-punned - you know how I like a good pun), “Why are you checking elephant documents?”, to which he comfortably replied “You asked me to”, why aren’t the same people asking “Why are you allowing one of your National Parks to be partially flooded?”, or if - as I suspect - he has not much choice in the matter why are we not helping him stand his ground.

So your question is: “Why is this more important?”.  Well, we are, of course, duty bound as elephant carers to try to improve the way captive elephants are cared for in Thailand, to support those camps that show good models, to help those that want to do better, to help tourists choose which model they’ll prefer while, of course, giving those elephants and mahouts we are directly responsible as good a life as possible.  Our goal must be the conservation of the species and very little any of us do directly with captive elephants will have a positive effect (though by buying elephants and creating a market we can easily have a negative effect), the conservation of the species will go on in the wild and that means helping viable wild populations remain viable and remain wild.  Allowing them to live, migrate & mix as best as our resources will allow.

So a school child’s (to whom I was attempting impart my dubious wisdom) question was: “If you’re talking to a hard nosed banker” and let’s face it I might be here “how do you persuade them they should care about any of this, let alone the elephants?”  Well, elephants and tigers take a lot to survive, they need to eat, once they’ve cleared the food from an area they need areas to roam where there’s more food, if you have populations of tigers and elephants in an area there’s a pretty good guess that everything else in the ecosystem is in place (noisily, in this case, including my favourite the Green Peafowl).  "Why should we care about 'everything else'?"  Well I happen to believe we should for aesthetic and philosphical reasons alone, but you're a hard nosed banker I'm told, so a hard nosed question for you: "How do you know that, somewhere underfoot, the ant that’s going to teach us how to cure cancer is not nibbling on the mushroom that’ll teach us how to photosynthesise electricity (yes, I know mushrooms can’t photosythesise but you get the gist)?".  Not only is every decent forest absorbing carbon, pumping oxygen, there's no denying there's stuff in there we haven't even dreamed uses for yet.

I’m not calling for a furore, that’s not my style, but perhaps we should find a way to ask whether this dam is completely necessary, whether plans have been made to ensure it doesn’t harm existing populations of significant mega fauna of the sort we can get emotionally charged about and the possibly equally important mushroom chewing ants.

If we can raise a furore about the perceived injustice of the Government asking to see if we have been following the elephant registration law do you think we can also ask a few questions about something that might actually effect the continued viability of the species?

P.S. Apologies to bankers, the "hard nosed banker" character was invented by the school-kid who asked the question, not me, i'll see to it she's punished.

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MAE WONG WRANGLE

New dam will drown years of recovery work

The cabinet's approval in priniciple at its April 10 meeting of the 13 billion baht Mae Wong dam construction project inside the Mae Wong National Park in Nakhon Sawan has sent shockwaves through conservation communities inside and outside Thailand.

The ultra-clear and pristine water of the Mae Wong River enjoyed by visitors and the home of numerous endangered wildlife species. The area will be inundated by a planned dam.

The dam will have a maximum capacity of 258 million cubic metres of water and it will help to irrigate farmland covering an area of 480 square kilometres (300,000 rai).

Proponents say the dam will also control water flowing into the Chao Phraya River and, perhaps, reduce flooding. However, following the original plan, the dam will block the Mae Wong River, called Mae Rewa by locals, and inundate an area of more than 18 sq km inside the well-protected Mae Wong National Park. The dam will surely destroy forest, wildlife and scenic areas long appreciated by Thailand and the international community which have supported government efforts to help forest ecosystems and endangered species recover _ especially tigers and elephants inside the park.

The national park has been protected under the 1961 National Park Act for more than 24 years. Along the long journey of protection efforts successive governments have invested in total more than 300 million baht to make the park as secure as it is today. The park covers an area of 900 sq km. It is part of the largest protected area system in mainland Southeast Asia called the Western Forest Complex, which covers 17 protected areas of 18,000 sq km. Strategically, the park serves as an important protective buffer for the Huay Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, a globally important world heritage site. Located next to the south of the Mae Wong River, Huay Kha Khaeng has been internationally recognised as one of the very few places on Earth that can protect functioning populations of wild tigers, an endangered species with only 3,200 remaining in the world.

The entire Western Forest Complex is also Thailand's very last stronghold for many globally endangered and vulnerable species including the Asian elephant, banteng, tapir, gaur, sambar, green peafowl and rufous-necked hornbill. In support of the effort, the international community fighting to prevent the extinction of endangered species has hailed the long and firmly held policy of Thailand to protect the Western Forest Complex and its associated natural heritage as an example for others to follow.

Unfortunately, last week's decision by the cabinet on the Mae Wong dam project will set back the natural recovery course by furthering the destruction of one of the most sites offering most hope for protecting endangered species.

In short, the future of this world-class protected area is at risk.

It took generations of dedicated park rangers and officers to secure the park from various forms of human destruction. More than 20 years ago logging concessions, shifting cultivation, and hunting almost denuded the forest and wildlife inside Mae Wong before it became a national park. Clear evidence of past exploitation is evident as stumps of past glorious teak and hardwood trees still dot the landscape inside the park. Twenty years ago the forest was almost empty of large mammals and birds.

Tigers, elephants, banteng, and sambar were nearly hunted to extinction from the park. Green peafowl, the largest pheasant in Asia, went extinct from its foremost habitat along the Mae Wong River. Thanks to an amazing recovery under excellent protection together with species reintroduction programmes, today visitors can appreciate the return of endangered wildlife to this forest. The park is surely on course to becoming a world-class protected area.

Walking along the pristine banks of the Mae Wong River today we can easily come across dense tracks of sambar deer, the largest deer in Asia, together with tracks of muntjac, wild pigs, smooth-coated otters (globally vulnerable large otters) and other wildlife. We can hear green peafowl calling loudly right on the very part of the Mae Wong River where the dam is proposed to be built.

The most striking recovery among all the wildlife is that of wild tigers.

Following the government-led tiger conservation project of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation with support from key international organisations, including the World Wildlife Fund and Wildlife Conservation Society, the impressive recovery of wild tigers in the Mae Wong National Park has been confirmed. It's been proven that some of the tigers recorded have come from the Huay Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary. It is a success story for Thailand's environmental policy of protecting large forest tracts and maintaining connectivity in order to give tigers and other endangered species a chance to recover.

In the next 10 years wildlife experts believe that if we keep doing the right things by improving protection in Mae Wong, the park will be teeming with tigers, sambar, gaur, green peafowl and many other endangered species. The recovery of those animals ultimately means the revival of an ecosystem and watershed long abused. In terms of the economy, it will promote ecotourism and raise incomes and revenues more sustainably and sufficiently for the government and local communities living next to the park. Crucially, it will secure the integrity of a contiguous natural world heritage site _ Huay Kha Khaeng and the whole Western Forest Complex _ for future generations.

However, that vision will vanish if the Mae Wong dam is allowed to proceed in this great forest. The dam will destroy the most scenic site on the Mae Wong River where large numbers of tourists have come to appreciate the natural beauty. The reservoir will inundate all the land below 200 metres, which is considered the best habitat for wildlife. The reservoir will open easy access for poachers to come in by raft or boat to hunt sambar, muntjac, wild pigs, and, surely, tigers until the area becomes empty of wildlife. Similar things have happened in other forests next to dams and reservoirs in Thailand. Because the dam site is only about 10km to the boundary of Huay Kha Khaeng, the dam will send damaging ripples to the world heritage site by allowing easy access and escape routes for poachers and wood and forest product smugglers. It will be like setting the clock back to the destructive and exploitative era when park rangers were unable to control the forest.

In recent decades many countries have halted large development projects that would lead to the destruction of the very few remaining forests. Some developed countries have decided to tear down dams to help river and riverine ecosystems recover. The decision by the government on the Mae Wong dam is a move in the opposite direction to the global trend towards conserving the world's natural heritage. It is unwise to tread such a destructive path.

Policymakers should reconsider and stop the Mae Wong dam project and other large development projects inside other national parks and wildlife sanctuaries that will follow. The Mae Wong National Park belongs to all Thais, not just the locals.

Water volume from the Mae Wong River is not a major source of flooding and it is not worth spending the billions of baht required to build this dam. National parks and wildlife sanctuaries contain irreplaceable endangered species and intrinsic ecosystem values that we should be able to borrow from for the benefit of future generations.

National parks such as Mae Wong and wildlife sanctuaries such as Huay Kha Khaeng are there to protect the global natural heritage that current and future governments do not have the right to decimate.

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