EDITORIAL: No will to stop encroachers

Demolition orders recently issued by the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) for 11 resorts, including the controversial 88 Garmonte which was found to have encroached on a national park, invite a sense of deja vu. These infringements have been an unsolved problem in Thap Lan National Park for almost 40 years.

The encroachment by 88 Gramonte, one of the luxury resorts in Nakhon Ratchasima’s Wang Nam Khieo district, is just the tip of the iceberg. It made news headlines after the ruling Palang Pracharath Party hosted a meeting there last Monday.

By issuing the demolition orders, the DNP may appear to have taken a tough stance. But it had already raided and charged 88 Gramonte resort with forest encroachment in May 2012 when three illegal buildings were found on 20-rai of land.

There must be something wrong. Five years later, another raid was conducted at the compound and the occupied area was found to have expanded to 34 rai with 18 buildings. One can only imagine how the resort was further developed since the first raid, to then become a prominent name chosen by the PPRP to celebrate its political success.

Public prosecutors decided in November last year not to indict the resort’s operator for encroachment, citing a Nakhon Ratchasima land reform committee statement which said the buildings are located on Sor Por Kor land set aside for landless farmers, not in the national park.

In fact, whether the area is in the national park or on reserved land, it should not have a resort on it. Sor Por Kor land is supposed to be used and preserved for agricultural purposes and it cannot be sold or transferred to anyone except heirs of the entitled farmers.

How was development of the resort on Sor Por Kor land allowed in the first place and how has the provincial agricultural land reform office responded to the infringement?

The encroachment of 88 Gramonte is just one of many similar cases in Thap Lan National Park. It is part of the prolonged problem which stems from different agencies and governments working in silos.

In 1981, an area of more than 2,000 square kilometres in Nakhon Ratchasima and Prachin Buri was declared Thap Lan National Park. But without a comprehensive survey of land utilisation, the park’s territory partially overlapped with areas declared as Sor Por Kor land in 1978 and several villages where people had settled prior to the demarcation.

After Wang Nam Khieo blossomed into a lucrative tourist destination, villagers who settled in the area but became “encroachers” sold their land plots to rich investors who built private or commercial properties there, despite both parties having no legal right to engage in the transaction. Some state officials even cooperated in their transactions.

The military government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha came up with a forest reclamation policy to solve encroachment on forest land, but it has mainly evicted poor forest dwellers who have lived there for generations before the state demarcation of their land as national parks. Meanwhile, the state has not taken such tough measures against luxury resorts encroaching on similar forest areas.

As long as the DNP continues to issue “demolition orders” against luxury resorts without following through on the threat, the problem will remain unsolved. As it has done in the past, the department will sink back into profitable apathy until fresh negative publicity prompts another round of these hollow orders.