FREELAND‘s education team organized the final conservation youth camp of 2011 at Khao Yai National Park last week. Students from nearby schools came to camp out and explore, while learning about the park and the importance of conserving its wildlife.

Sponsored by the Australia-Thailand Institute and Free the Bears Fund, this youth camp focused on endangered bear species, including the Asiatic Black Bear and Sun Bear. Students learned about the constant threat of poaching these animals face, as well as ongoing efforts by park rangers and organizations like ours to protect them and to halt wildlife trafficking.

Over three days, a variety of fun and challenging activities helped students make a lasting connection with nature. Early morning treks through the park to explore and learn how to identify animal tracks and sign, were followed by outdoor lessons, games and camp fire songs.

Our young budding conservationists were encouraged to present their ideas on protecting bears and discuss the importance of community involvement in wildlife and ecosystem conservation. The camp culminated in students performing their own skits to demonstrate what they’d learned and presenting their own plans for a more harmonious co-existance of human communities and forests.

From the number of enthusiastic smiles, it’s clear that the seeds for dozens of new wildlife activists were sown in local communities this month, which can only help Khao Yai’s wildlife.

Monitoring wildlife is crucial to prioritizing high risk areas for stretched patrol staff tasked with stopping poaching in Thailand’s forests.

Setting camera traps and identifying tracks is the best way to record the presence of reclusive animals, as many only hunt and forage at night.

Usually set along known animal thoroughfares for weeks at a at time; camera traps use an infra-red sensor to detect movement, triggering a flash and recording an series of images. Cameras are enclosed inside protective metal boxes to defend against bad weather and clumsy elephants.

Today, twenty-five selected forest rangers from Thailand’s national park system completed an intensive week-long monitoring and analysis training course in the Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai Forest Complex.

FREELAND’s signature PROTECT (Protected area Operational and Tactical Enforcement Conservation Training) monitoring course covers navigation, data recording, wildlife and wildlife sign identification, as well as camera trapping skills. It is conducted in the forest and on patrol to allow park rangers to practice their newly acquired skills.

The course aims to develop participants’ understanding of why collecting wildlife and poaching violation data is necessary to guide more effective park management strategies, including how it can be mapped and analyzed.

The training is being implemented by FREELAND under the new USAID funded ARREST (Asia’s Regional Response to Endangered Species Trafficking) program.

Although no elephants participated, the Human – Elephant Conflict Resolution Workshop for farmers held in Sueng Sang, Nakorn Ratchasima Province, today saw positive discussion of humane solutions to the lingering problem of crop damage caused by hungry elephants.

Thap Lan National Park, the Eastern Forest Complex Elephant Conservation Association and FREELAND Foundation jointly hosted one-day discussion panel for 64 local farmers aimed at mitigating human and elephant conflicts around the park to avoid loss of elephant or human life.

Drawing on knowledge gained from last year’s study tour Western Thailand’s Salak Phra Wildlife Sanctuary (around which similar problems have been successfully mitigated), both short-term and long-term solutions were discussed at the workshop, including planting more trees, digging ditches around villages, as well as measures to increase food and water sources for elephants inside the National Park and away from farms.

Preventing tree clearing, forest encroachment and ecosystem degradation to maintain large habitat corridors are the best overarching ways to stop elephants leaving the forest in search of food and water during the dry season.

With support from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, FREELAND is working closely with park chiefs, rangers and communities surrounding the Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai Forest Complex to monitor and protect elephants and other endangered wildlife, and find long-term solutions to pressing conservation issues.

Please help us protect wildlife by donating online.

From our training center in Wang Nam Keaw, FREELAND is helping ex-poacher communities around Khao Yai escape poverty and crime through sustainable organic farming.

Last month, dozens of villagers learned how to cultivate organic mushrooms during a three-day U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sponsored training that also covered barn construction, organic pest control, basic accounting and preparing produce for market.

Initiated with support from the Blue Moon Fund, this project seeds self-sustaining organic farming businesses, benefiting rural families, while also giving wildlife populations a chance to rebound.

Seeding alternative livelihoods compliments regular FREELAND ranger trainings to strengthen protected area law enforcement, creating a ‘push-pull’ effect to reduce unsustainable poaching in the forest corridor while also alleviating the conditions that motivate it.

With support from USAID and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, FREELAND is working to scale up these projects to create a self-sustaining shield of community forest stewardship along the border of the Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai Forest Complex:

• Enhancing protection for biodiversity, watersheds, carbon storage and other environmental services
• Reducing rural poverty and crime
• Increasing (healthy) food security

To find out more about project replication plans and how you can help, view the FREELAND Organics concept note.

Park rangers from across Asia completed an intensive counter poaching operations training course today under FREELAND‘s new U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funded program called ARREST (Asia’s Regional Response to Endangered Species Trafficking).

More than 50 park rangers from Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Laos and Thailand trained together for two weeks under the guidance of FREELAND’s expert instructors at Khao Yai National Park’s Regional Nature Protection Training Center in Nakhon Ratchasima Province, Thailand. Participants included a woman from Indonesia’s SPORC (Satuan Polisi Hutan Reaksi Cepat – Rapid Reaction Forest Police) Brigade, the first female officer to be trained through ARREST.

Designed to dramatically improve the security of Asia’s remaining forest reserves through enhanced patrolling and law enforcement, FREELAND’s signature PROTECT (Protected area Operational and Tactical Enforcement Conservation Training) course delivers best practice training in navigation, patrolling, first aid, reconnaissance, raids, takedowns, arrest, search, crime scene processing, and other skills park rangers need to do their job safely and effectively.

With support from USAID, the ASEAN Center for Biodiversity, the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN), and other ARREST partners, this course will be adapted and delivered across Asia during the next five years to strengthen defenses for forests under attack from poachers, illegal loggers, and land encroachment.

Make a donation to help us train and equip the forest guardians that put their lives on the line every day to protect our planet’s lungs.

This year we’ll be working with Australia’s Free the Bears to instill knowledge of bears and bear conservation. In addition to the Asiatic black bear and Sun bear, students will learn about unique endangered animals from Australia. Stay tuned for more exciting news on the Paws for Thought education program.

FREELAND’s Mobile Unit needs your support to keep rolling. Donate online today to help nurture Thailand’s future conservation leaders.

Khao Yai National Park attracts between 500,000 and 1 million visitors every year, sometimes more. With high volume tourism, park staff face real challenges to ensure adverse impacts on wildlife and ecosystems are minimized.

Based on research conducted at the park this year, Asia Fellow Award winner Wiwik Mahdayani from the Jakarta-based Destination Management Center for Sustainable Tourism & Conservation has made several strategic recommendations to ensure tourism is managed sustainably, including:

1. Improving understanding of basic environmental issues among visitors to encourage appreciation for the park and responsible behavior;
2. Building capacity for tourism service among park staff so they can also encourage responsible visitor behavior; and
3. Improving marketing strategies and communication of ecotourism at Khao Yai to disperse flow of visitors to the park more evenly.

For detailed recommendations and more insights into visitor management and ecotourism development at Khao Yai, download the full case study.

Wildlife monitoring by FREELAND Foundation in collaboration with Department of National Park rangers has discovered tigers in parts of Eastern Thailand where they were previously thought to have been completely extirpated.

Subject of a Guardian feature story and video dispatch “Thailand jungles mask surprise rise in tiger numbers”, the discovery brings new hope that a decimated wild tiger population could rebound if the animals and their habitat can be protected.

Providing better protection for tigers will benefit countless other species (including humans), as critical living ecosystems are preserved. Please support FREELAND’s efforts to increase protection for wildlife and habitats in Thailand and across Asia, make a donation today.

FREELAND’s Mobile Education Unit visits schools and communities around the Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai Forest Complex to help children and adults learn more about the importance of wildlife and habitat conservation.

Through group activities, including workshops, tree plantings, games and songs, the Mobile Unit has been educating and inspiring rural students for over a decade – helping to steer students and their families away from unsustainable poaching and logging, while encouraging greater community stewardship of forests.

We need your support to keep the Mobile Unit rolling. Donating just $10 will supply a student learning pack to nurture a future conservationist.

FREELAND has been monitoring wildlife in Thailand’s forests for more than a decade in cooperation with the Department of National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, and with the support of Smithsonian and other sponsors.

Newly published photos spanning several years of camera trap surveys highlight the diversity of wild animal species found in Khao Yai National Park, including many rarely seen in daylight.

Information about wildlife populations, such as trends and migrations, is vital to protecting forest reserves effectively.

FREELAND’s best-practice PROTECT monitoring and enforcement training for park rangers helps them identify and respond to poaching threats by planning patrols to protect key wildlife populations.

This work continues today with support from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 21st Century Tiger, the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, Care for the Wild, Rufford Small Grants, Panthera, and other sponsors.