Public hearings to shed more light on Thap Lan’s boundary row

The Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) has conducted a public hearing, both onsite among communities and via online channels, about changes to the Thap Lan National Park’s boundary.

All public hearings are set to be concluded on Friday, after which the results will be submitted to the National Committee on National Parks within 30 days, DNP director-general Attapol Charoenchansa said on Tuesday. 

Attapol was responding concerns raised by several parties that the park stands to lose 424sqkm due to new borders to be defined by the One Map project.

This concern resulted in hashtags #saveอุทยานแห่งชาติทับลาน (Save Thap Lan National Park) and #saveทับลาน (Save Thap Lan) trending on Thai social media on Monday.

The Thap Lan National Park, spanning 2,240sqkm across the Northeast provinces of Prachinburi, Nakhon Ratchasima and Sa Kaew, was established on December 23, 1981. However, its borders overlapped borders defined in 1978 by the Agricultural Land Reform Office (ALRO), resulting in a disputed area of 125sqkm.

In March 2023, the Cabinet agreed with the National Land Policy Board (NLPB)’s proposal to redraw the borders of the national park in line with the One Map project, which uses a mapping ratio of 1:4000 to revise boundaries nationwide.

Attapol said the changes to the park boundary aim to resolve longstanding disputes in which farmers allotted land by ALRO were being accused of encroaching on protected forestland. These disputes have been lying unresolved in court for decades now.

Under the Cabinet’s resolution, the land retracted from the national park’s boundary will be transferred to ALRO. Farmers allotted plots by ALRO will be allowed to transfer it to someone else after five years.

“The focus of the public hearings is to determine who should be allowed to keep the land, as current land holders in this 424sqkm area includes farmers who had been granted them by ALRO and those who bought the plots from original farmers for other purposes, like building resorts,” he said.