More Than 300 Died; Loggers Called Villains : Floods Spur Drive to Save Thai Forests

Floods that tore through southern Thailand in November, killing more than 300 people, have given impetus to the fight to preserve what remains of the country’s tropical forests from greedy loggers and land-hungry farmers.

The pillage of the forests exposed a dark side of the Thai economic success, a mad rush for development in which long-term interests are often sacrificed for the short-term enrichment of a few.

The government suspended all logging concessions in the southern provinces after the torrential rain brought an avalanche of mud, water and timber crashing down on valleys, wiping out entire villages.

No Ban on Logging

Under public pressure, Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan also announced measures that would empower the government to halt logging across the country, but disappointed conservationists by stopping short of an immediate ban.

Environmentalists blamed loggers for stripping hills of trees that had bound the earth together and formed a barrier to landslides. Cut logs were swept along with boulders in the floods, demolishing all in their path.

“Rocks as big as tractors were washed down the hills. The rice fields are full of silt, fine red grains of stone. In three days we saw the equivalent of 1,000 years of erosion,” said Surin Pitsuwan, a member of Parliament from the area.

“It shows people the direct link between environmental destruction and floods,” he said.

Forest Area Halved

The area of forest in Thailand has been halved in the last 30 years and now covers less than 29% of the country. Seventy million cubic feet of wood are still removed annually.

Thai officials and journalists say they have been wary of probing logging controversies, fearing that rich and powerful timber interests may resort to violence to silence them.

But now angry campaigners against indiscriminate logging, who have shouted their message to deaf government ears for a decade, have been given new hope.

Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan said his government would consider a ban on logging across the country if there were a legal way to scrap the concessions. “Personally I want to terminate all logging concessions nationwide,” he said.

The Thai press, opposition figures, villagers fighting to save valuable watershed areas and independent groups like the Project for Ecological Recovery, (PER) seized on his remarks.

Politically Thinkable

PER Director Witoon Permpongsacharoen said it was only since the catastrophe in the south, which caused about $160 million in damage, that a wholesale stop to timber-cutting had been politically thinkable.

Chatichai has been accused of hedging on the “total ban” issue by handing it to legal experts.

“By squandering this golden opportunity to stop all logging operations . . . the Chatichai administration is from now on to be held directly responsible for all adverse consequences of forest destruction,” The Nation newspaper said.

Legal experts say the government could rescind the 30-year concessions if it really wanted to, either by passing a new law or by accusing the concessionaires of failing to stick to the letter of their agreements, which few, if any, do.

Retired Supreme Court Judge Niyom Tiwtanont, who has closely observed the corruption that riddles all aspects of the timber trade, called the forestry officials and local officials responsible a “provincial mafia.”