Kayah Karen Tenasserim Ecoregion Program Launches New Protected Area Support Initiative

Program Kicks off with New Projects in Mae Wong and Klong Lan National Parks

With national and international demand growing for such high-profile species as tigers, sambar, and banteng, it is clear that the protected areas that support these often-targeted species will require an especially high degree of protection and effective management. In over 30 years of work in Thailand, WWF has built a strong track record in supporting Thailand’s efforts to develop and manage the country’s extensive protected area system. This initiative aims to expand on this experience by linking protected area support activities with a landscape perspective and especially the unique management needs of tigers and their prey species.

In March 2010, three tigers were killed by poachers in the heart of Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary—often heralded as one of the region’s most carefully protected areas. For years, similar events throughout the region have underscored an alarming pattern—that wildlife populations and ecological integrity are under fire even within the small proportion of the region designated primarily for biodiversity protection.

To confront this growing threat, WWF is joining forces with Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife, and Plant conservation to improve conservation in and around a number of protected areas that play a key role in the country’s overall tiger conservation strategy. While ongoing projects in Kuiburi National Park and Thung Yai Wildlife Sanctuary will continue to receive support fro

m WWF, new projects will target protected area management, governance, and monitoring in two additional areas, Mae Wong and Klong Lan National Parks in the northern tier of Thailand’s Western Forest Complex.

According to Pete Cutter, Kayah Karen Tenasserim Ecoregion Coordinator, “the context of these areas and the current challenges they face are a particularly good fit for WWF’s Thailand team. Although they have suffered the impacts of encroachment and prey depletion over the last decade, they are contiguous with the region’s highest density tiger populations and therefore represent a clear opportunity for expanding one of Asia’s most productive tiger core areas. Our Conservation Biology Unit has now undertaken tiger prey restoration work in several other areas and has the experience to help Mae Wong and Klong Lan achieve significant recovery of prey numbers and ultimately tigers.”

Further indication that the area represents a particularly unique situation has come from a long-term tiger ecological research project in neighboring Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary. The project has collared and tracked seven tigers so as to study their movements, interactions, and hunting behavior. The movements of a recently collared dispersing female show her taking several forays into Mae Wong—apparently trying to establish her first home range (See map at right).

“We don’t know why she isn’t sticking around,” said Cutter, “but we suspect it is due to one of the primary issues we plan to address in this new project: insufficient prey numbers.”

WWF anticipates that the support role now being initiated in these two important protected areas will likely span several years.