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Bangkok Post (8/8/99)



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<bold>Salween Forest

</bold>

Declared a national park and wildlife sanctuary by the Thai government,
that should have been enough to protect the Salween Forest from the bite
of blades. But the reality inside the 1.139-million rai forest which
adjoins the Burmese border along the Salween River, tells another story.
The scars of decades of both sanctioned and illegal logging of the
forest's high grade teak for shipment all over the world are still
painfully visible. Everywhere are stumps, debarked trees standing dead,
teak and hardwood logs lying on the ground. How did it get to be this
way?The first foreign logging firm, the East Asiatic Co, paid stump fees
to the Prince of Chiang Mai from 1917 to 1919. The next concession was
granted by the royal family of Chiang Mai to the Bombay Burma Co, which
removed teak logs from 1920 until 1933. Subsequently, the Forestry
Department allocated Salween logging concessions to the northern royal
family on a rotational basis. This practice continued until 1961 when the
Forest Industry Organisation (FIO) was established by the government to
log teak and yang (Dipterocarpus) trees, which lasted until 1966.


Then in 1973, the Forestry Department awarded a kayaloei (assorted woods)
logging concession to the War Veterans Organisation (WVO). The concession
allowed the WVO to log to the East of the Khun Yuam forest, above the
Salween Forest. When the concession ended in 1981, a lower Salween forest
concession was awarded to Prince Wattana Chotana and Prince Arphon
Suwannasingh and an upper concession was awarded to the Mae Hong Son
Timber Co, both of which lasted until the 1998 logging ban.


Parallel to logging developments, conservation efforts also took root and
steadily grew.


Thanks to villagers who impressed upon the authorities the richness of
wildlife in the area, approximately 343,000 rai of the forest was
designated as the Salween wildlife sanctuary in 1978. This was expanded
by 546,000 rai in 1983, and by a further 203,000 in 1984, when expired
logging concessions were annexed.


However, it was not until 1994 that the 450,000-rai lower Salween
national park was declared a sanctuary. That left 141,000 rai as a
national forest reserve.


Naturally, the creation and expansion of these sanctuaries left less for
the loggers and threatened to run them out of business.


And that was how illegal logging took root as a way of life in the
border

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<bold>Two men held with speed pills

Cheewin Sattha

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Two Burmese men have been charged with smuggling more than 5,000 speed
pills into Thailand via Pang Ma Pha district of this northern province.


Pang Ma Pha district officials led by assistant district chief Adul
Nuipakdi, apprehended Mok Mong Tai, 41, and Jai Nong, 21, and seized
5,400 amphetamine pills and a pistol from the two during a body search at
Muang Pam village in Tambon Tham Lod on Friday night.


The assistant district chief said he believed the two Shan men were about
to deliver the drugs to customers in Ban Wana Luang-reportedly a major
centre for drug abuse and prostitution among the Red Muser hilltribe
people



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