Chiang Mai national park calls for troops to step in and help fight forest fires

So far, more than 33,000 rai (5,280 hectares) of forested land in the national park has been destroyed.

Kritsayam Kongsatree, director of the 16th protected zones administration office, said park officials had tried but failed to put out the fires raging for more than a week mainly because local villagers set them off to harvest wild plants or hunt animals. He reckoned they also light fires to take revenge on park officials for stopping from hunting.

Hence, his office has had to seek help from the Third Army Area to send two units of paratroopers to mainly patrol forests to prevent villagers from starting new fires and to put out any fires they see starting, Kritsayam said.

Park officials backed up by several local agencies have tried in vain to douse the fires that have been ravaging forests in the three districts of Hot, Chom Thong and Mae Cham. So far, fires have damaged 33,000 rai of Ob Luang National Park in Hot district alone.

Kritsayam said it was difficult for his staff to prevent fires in the Ob Luang Park because it covers more than 340,000 rai and most of it is mountainous. He added that two teams of paratroopers began patrolling the park area on Monday. He said his office has also dispatched two helicopters borrowed from the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry and the Interior Ministry to support fire-fighting in the Pha Dam area for two days, but the blaze could not yet be controlled.

He complained that though the park is closed to the public, local villagers still managed to sneak in to hunt and collect edible plants and start fires.

However, the situation in the park this year is far better than last year. From January 1 to February 20 last year, more than 79,900 rai of Ob Luang park had been burned down compared to 33,000 in the same period this year. On Monday, there were 142 hotspots in Chiang Mai, 52 were found in Mae Cham and 42 in Hot districts, Kritsayam said.