Is there a published source for these precious information?
Do you mean that people who sided with the government in the late 1960s and 1970s and resettled in lowland resettlement centres in Kamphaeng Phet were then ‘offered’ to relocate in the uplands of western Kamphaeng Phet? Is it possible to know when approximately that occurred and if it was part of one of the many national security projects? Could it be for example part of the ‘border self-defense village project’ created in 1978 and which had by 1981 94 such villages established along the Thai-Burmese border (Bamrungsuk 1999)?

ref
Bamrungsuk S. (1999) From Dominance to Power Sharing: The Military and Politics in Thailand, 1973 – 1992. Columbia University.

A follow-up to this my first post in New Mandala and my response to Aiontay’s request ( Comment May 14 2009 7) for further details about Pulangka Yao crop scheduling in the 1960s and KMY”confiscatiions” (etc) appears here. Discussion and images of rubble and cairns on opium farms and about stone walling of the perimeters of those fields may be of interest to archaeologists in the UK as well as Southeast Asia.

However the clarity, precision and economy with which JP himself (May 21 10 ) has now already summarised that material* renders redundant any attempt by me to emulate his scholarship which provides more evidence than I ever imagined could be available for my main point concerning wild –life sanctauaries in the western borderlands of North Thailand : that during several decades under the Royal Thai Army( 3rd Region) authority, commercial clear-felling in the former habitats of poppy-growing mountain minorities has indeed supplemented military eviction as a strategy for ending shifting cultivation and especially opium production in such nature reserves.

I am also very much taken by Kesamanee’s (1995: 245-248) references to instances where those who have acquired licenses as commercial operators on behalf of timber interests have in some cases themselves been forestry officials. This charge obviously warrants further and closer consideration in future studies of forestry politics in the Kingdom’s north.

*Further to the above , I thank JP Leblond for providing me with pdf copies of these documents.

References

Kesmanee C. (1995) Moving Hilltribes People to the Lowlands: The Resettlement Experience in Thailand. In: H. M. Mathur & M. M. Cernea (eds.), Resettlement: Focus on Asian Experiences: Vikas Publishing House PVT LTD

Here’s a long extract of Kesmanee (1987). As you will see, he points out that the pattern of relocation of highlanders followed by illegal logging is reported by several informants in many areas. Its existence is documented by a third party in one area: Mae Wong NP & Khlong Lan NP, Kaemphaeng Phet. As I said before: is it possible professor Miles’ post proves it also occurred in Thung Yai Naresuan WS?

The extract from Kesmanee:

“Stories from various informants in different locations are consistent in one respect, how, after ordering the hilltribes out, government officers conducted logging operation on a large scale under the guise of hilltribe forest destruction. While the widely held view that such stories are made up by hilltribe people intent on revenge may deserve critical attention, not all such stories can be discounted. Take for example the following information obtained by a news reporter who observed a case at first hand. It clearly deserves considerable weight when assessing villagers claims.

‘The evacuation of more than 900 hilltribe families from national parks in Kamphaeng Phet province to protect watershed areas becomes deplorable when government officers turn into forest destroyers and build timber mills on a large scale. The Third Army and the Royal Forestry Department evacuated hiltribes from Mae Wong National Park, Khlong Kha Lung district, and Khlong Lan National Park, Khlong Lan district, Kamphaneg Phet. Beginning with closing off the Khlong Lan-Umphang Road, Tak Province from 28 February earlier this year. After that, checkpoint were set up to forbid movement in and out beyond km. 57 to all but national park staff. IT appears that after getting rid of the previous inhabitants, Mae Wong National Park staff became forest destroyers, bringing in machines and circular saws to set up mobile timber mills working day and night at 4 bases along hillsides between km. 65 and 100. Ten-wheel trucks transporting the wood for sale in Bangkok passed the various checkpoint easily under the claim of being on high-level Royal Forest Department business. Beginning in June 1986, villagers going up to look for forest products saw the logging and were appalled. They secretly photographed the mobile sawmill in operation and took the evidence to prost to the Third Army, the Royal Forest Department, and the Office of the Prime Minister but nothing happened. Then the government officers became alert, stopped the transport of wood, and brought down all the equipment. The matter died down without any investigation or orders for staff transfer. These government officers became much more daring and resumed logging with say and nearly 50 workers … [Thai Rath, 1986, "Hilltribe Evacuation Makes a Sad Story: Various Officers Take Opportunity for Large-Scale Logging", November 4. (in Thai)]‘

“The Thai rath news reporter who visited the area saw teak, rubber trees and makhamong wood from large trees that had recently been felled, as well as milled wood being transported out. He also heard the sounds of trees being cut down and machines milling wood. “ (Kesmanee 1987, p. 26-27)

When I read Professor Miles’ post and wrote my comment, I had in mind the three following interrelated questions:

First, to what extent was the drive for relocating population fuelled by the prospects of quick returns from forest exploitation? The pattern relocation-(il)legal logging discussed in his text is reported in at least four areas between 1986 and 1992: (1) Mae Wong NP & Khlong Lan NP (Kesmanee 1987), (2) Phop Phra Relocation center, Phop Phra district, Tak (Anon 1991), and as part of the Khor Jor Kor project (Pye 2005, p 147-9) in (3) Thap Lan NP/Dong Yai forest (Khorat & Buriram) and (4) Dong Kwang Forest (Phu Phan Mtns area, Sakon Nakhon). Did the same pattern also happen in Thung Yai Naresuan?

Second, did relocating people out of forest areas help increase forest cover? In Phu Langkha, an abandoned area has not rejuvenated into forest cover after several decades. Recently, I spent (some might say wasted) a day or two downloading and comparing satellites images of sites where population resettlement occurred. I was surprised by the results of this very preliminary and sketchy analysis. I looked at four sites from which large populations were resettled : SE Thailand (Chanthaburi/Prachin Buri/Sa Kaeo), Thap Lan NP/Dong Yai forest (Khorat), Doi Luang NP (Lampang) and Mae Wong/Khlong Lan NP (Kamphaeng Phet). In the first two, I saw no changes except further deforestation due apparently to government projects. In the third, there was some very modest reforestation in one area. The analysis in the last area was inconclusive due to the dates the satellites images available were taken (1973, 1989 and 1999, while relocation occurred in 1986). If reforestation occurred, it did so very rapidly between 1986 and 1989. Why has reforestation not followed ? Are these meagre environmental benefits worth the human and financial costs of relocation?

Third, is it possible that in Thailand researchers attempting to explain and combat the spread and persistence of Imperata and other dominant grasses overlook the fact that many of the sites they study have been subject to warfare operations, notably the use of napalm and defoliant and the bulldozing of forests close to the roads? Perhaps, as in Vietnam, recent anthropogenic disturbances are not the only factors one should be investigating.

References
Anon (1991) Tak ranger commander assails resettlement scheme. Bangkok Post, (March 11).

Kesmanee C. (1987) Hilltribe Relocation Policy: Is There a Way Out of the Labyrinth? A Case Study of Kamphaeng Phet. Tribal Research Institute. [available from White Lotus press. Thai version is: Nayobai kan ophayop chaokhao thangook nai khao wongkot: koranee suksa changwat kamphaengphet]

Kesmanee C. (1988) Hilltribe Relocation Policy in Thailand. Cultural Survival Quarterly, 12(4).

Kesmanee C. (1995) Moving Hilltribes People to the Lowlands: The Resettlement Experience in Thailand. In: H. M. Mathur & M. M. Cernea (eds.), Resettlement: Focus on Asian Experiences: Vikas Publishing House PVT LTD.

Pye O. (2005) Khor Jor Kor: Forest Politics in Thailand, Chiang Mai: White Lotus.

There is certainly need for readers to call upon anthropologists to be less reticent about the Southeast Asian fires and especially to take action in correcting the stereotype of shifting cultivation as the cause . A brief visit to any clear-felled site whether the location is under Indonesian, Malaysian or Thai administration is sufficient to convince any observer that by comparison with the fuming moonscapes which multinational logging companies conventionally leave in their wakes , farmers whose agricultural future depends on reforestation through coppicing and self- seeding of trees after the firing of swiddens can make no more than an infinitessimal annual contribution to the Southeast Asia-wide burn which so concerns Ricky Walsh and to the monstrously international scale of the pollution which results . I refer to cultivators who have their own very good reasons to deter weed growth by not overworking their land but rather to nurture it by way of long fallow cycles which are evident from the landscapes illustrated in my previous post (NM 5 May 2009 : Images 9 & 14)

But no-one can gainsay the responsibility of those same multinational enterprises for the creation of the vast and it seems smoke -belching savannahs near which this well-informed subscriber chokes in outrage at the coal-face of the problem . Southeast Asian governments must give these corporations good reason to know that business prospects can also depend on simplicities such as natural reseeding and coppicing of trees ie on prior commitment to measures to restore the quality of well-worked farmland rather than to just let it lie waste.

I am glad to be corrected about the identity of the grass in the wastelands of my previous post’s images ( NM 5 May,2009: Images 12 &13) and will pass on that professional opinion to those Bangkok Bird Watchers who have advised me differently. Such botanical details are important and so of course are the subscriber’s titillating hints about the potential usefulness of such vegetation for roofing or the making of brooms (one fine sample of which my wife recently bought for me kerbside when by-passing Pitsanolok ).

But any devoted bird watcher in or out of Bangkok will also insist that it is even more important to recognise that in many contexts flourishing grasses like imperata of any variety are simply very hazardous weeds despite the good press they receive from roofers and broomsmakers. Thai defenders of the environment have been protesting courageously (but to deaf media) for decades that whether on or off nature reserves and in or out of wildlife sanctuaries uncontrolled grasslands of whatever variety become a menace to tree growth and thereby to indigenous fauna as well as to sustainable agriculture. But only now do I realise through Ricky Walsh that Southeast Asia’s increasingly extensive areas of savannahs are also highly combustible and according to him , that their burning is the major source of of the pollution which has become such a widespread and enduring danger to human health throughout several countries of the region . ( I became aware of the problem before journalists reported it and when afflicted by the effects in Singapore during 1988. )

The relentless persistence of that threat and the gargantuan dimensions it has assumed to-day demand more than mere repetition of lip-servicing castigation by media of a few traditionally equipped farmers in Borneo and Sumatra for slashing and burning the jungle they clear for the tiny swiddens from which they subsist . The dominant contribution of large-scale commercial clear-felling to the multiplication and expansion of the Southeast Asian grasslands demands front-page confirmation by Anthropology and other scholarship in a call in the name of science for the co-ordinated action by a plurality of governments and of the commensurate massive dimensions necessary to engage with the problem literally at the grassroots of their societies.

We can be grateful to Ricky Ward who fights fire well with the pen as he no doubt does also with other technology . He has provided New Mandala with additiional reasons for its previous warnings of the dangers with which the priorities of the multi-national lumber industry confront Southeast Asian interests. Thank you RW for reminding me that grass also burns.