I met my first poacher in a rainforest park called Khao Sok in Thailand's peninsular. His name was Nit. Our paths crossed serendipitously one damp day in September while I was scoping a new area to survey tigers and other carnivores. Nit was a seasoned tiger tracker, having lived at Khao Sok for 20 years, traipsing the forests in search of big game and adventure. His diminutive stature belied a frame of steel that carried him through dense thickets and forest without a sound. He had gained a reputation in the remote communities of the Khlong Saeng for helping get rid of problem tigers that preyed on livestock. Now Nit had put away his rifle for good and worked as a guide in a resort outside the park. What better person to help me find a tiger.

A camera-trap to record wildlife

Over many months, I worked with Nit at Khao Sok. Using Nit's keen knowledge of animal behaviour we followed trails crossed by elephants, Asiatic black bears and panthers. We used remote camera-traps to record the secret movements of nocturnal animals in the park. These devices take photographs of animals when they walk in front of an infrared beam. Instead of building a "haang" (hide or blind) to shoot quarry, Nit used his stealth to catch the wildlife on film using the camera-traps.

Together we surveyed forest areas across the park, trekking deep into the heart of the jungle. Each place we visited had a history of its own. Bang Hua Raed was a spot where the last Sumatran rhino known in Khao Sok was shot decades previously. Ao Din Daeng, a former communist camp, is now a deserted ghostly place where panthers and porcupines come to drink at a muddy waterhole, where pittas whistle long into the day. Nang Pray is a delightful forest substation where park visitors stay the night on floating bamboo rafts, and mouse deer venture out to feed at dusk in twos and threes. At Ton Toy, a haunting forest surrounded by towering karst cliffs, the comical laugh of helmeted hornbills and chatter of leaf monkeys breaks the dawn.

As our work progressed, we developed a strong friendship and mutual respect for each other. Nit admitted he had given up hunting when he joined a hunting party that killed a nursing mother elephant. He watched its calf die a painful death. "I look at my own kids and wonder how they would be if someone killed their mother. After that hunting trip, I never used my rifle again."

The reward for our efforts in the field was not trophies or wild meat but photographs of living animals. The camera-traps rarely shot an entire roll of film but what was recorded on the films was always surprising and sometimes unexpected; a brush-tailed porcupine feeding at a waterhole with a panther on the next frame (we found the remains of the porcupine nearby chomped by the big cat), an endangered stump-tailed macaque posing in full breeding colours on a ridgetop trail, a rare Fea's muntjac recorded for the first time in the park. But we never got a photo of a tiger at Khao Sok.

Nit already a local phenomenon in the area started to gain a reputation as a conservationist. He took great pride in showing photos the fruits of our labour to friends and local officials. Together we gave talks to visiting schoolchildren and we made a wildlife display for the Khao Sok visitor centre. It's still there today.

In 1997 I turned my attention to studying tigers at Balahala, a majestic forest in Thailand's deep south. The area is a true rainforest, wet all year round, drained by several large streams that flow from high mountain peaks on the Malaysia border. Tigers, elephants and nine species of hornbill share the forest with indigenous Sakai tribal people, denizens of the rainforest. Like Khao Sok, a large man-made lake lies at the centre of the forest, providing access to tourists, researchers, and unfortunately sometimes poachers.

Through a contact, I was introduced to two men who knew the area well. Both Prachinburi natives, Prawing and Tongbai were former aloewood collectors and wildlife poachers. Prawing for example had taken up hunting wildlife to supplement a meagre income from farming potatoes and collecting aloewood. He first hunted small game to survive, then to supply the local trade in wild meat near Khao Yai. Gradually he migrated to big game, and became a notorious elephant poacher and supplier of illegal ivory. One day the authorities chased him out of town and he escaped to the south.

The author tracking tigers in Balahala forest in southern Thailand

We formed a team to survey tigers in Balahala. Working with local border patrol police, we based ourselves at a field camp on the fertile banks of the Khlong Hala. At the request of Her Majesty Queen Sirikit, the border patrol have been stationed at Balahala since 1990, protecting the forests and watersheds. Wildlife has benefited from their presence. As testimony to their intervention, a herd of some 30 gaur roam the grasslands near the police camp, unperturbed by passing boats. But that is another story.

During 1997-1998 I made several expeditions with my team of poachers and police. As in Khao Sok, I made good use of the keen skills of my field staff in tracking tigers. On our first foray along the Khlong Hala we found tracks of a large tiger close to the camp. Then we came across the rotting carcass of a wild pig, apparently taken by the same tiger. Later we recorded that tiger on film, a big male, and the first of many photographs for the area.

A Sakai tribesman in Balahala forest

Using a scientific method I estimated there were 44 - 54 tigers in the Balahala forest, a very healthy population. Thanks to the good work of the border patrol police and the sustainable use of the forest by the Sakai people, Balahala is stocked full of food for tigers. Sambar, gaur and muntjac -- all tiger prey species -- are plentiful.

Later I hired Prawing and Tongbai as full-time staff. They have given up poaching and aloewood collecting for good and earn a respectable and stable salary. They help conduct surveys that tell us how many tigers are in a forest, and the situation for prey and habitats. They help train rangers how to use special survey equipment such as camera-traps and Global Positioning System (GPS) devices. Whereas in the past they used their natural talents for illegal and dangerous pursuits, now they help to save wildlife. The poachers have turned into protectors.

THE WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY (WCS) THAILAND PROGRAM
The history of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Thailand dates to the early 1980's when WCS supported behavioural studies of gibbons by Dr Warren Brockelman and his associates. Dr Alan Rabinowitz pioneered studies of carnivore ecology at Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary during the late 1980's and early 90's and helped shape the first regional transboundary conservation forum.

At the invitation of the government of Thailand, the Wildlife Conservation Society opened a project office in 1997 to support a wildlife management training programme, initiate an Indochina tiger conservation programme, support conservation research of government staff, and to help make wildlife conservation sustainable and more effective in Thailand. In 2002, WCS and the Thailand government agreed to a comprehensive Memorandum of Understanding to expand their working relationship and extend its term. The programme is directed by Dr Antony J. Lynam who has worked in Thailand since 1990 with the support of WCS. He is supported by a full-time staff of 15 Thai nationals. The programme has provided wildlife training and jobs for over 500 government staff, students, ex-poachers and conservationists.

All images featured in this article © Antony J. Lynam/WCS

Contact information
Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Thailand Programme Office
PO Box 170, Laksi
Bangkok 10210, Thailand
Tel: 66-(0)-2503-4478/9
Fax: 66-(0)-2503-4096
E-mail:
thailand@wcs.org
tlynam@wcs.org
Web sites:
www.wcs.org
www.wcs.org/thailand **operational in May 2003**

Dr. Antony Lynam joined the Wildlife Conservation Society in 1996 as Associate Conservation Ecologist and is based in Bangkok, Thailand, where he conducts wildlife field research and conservation training programmes with the government of Thailand and other countries in Southeast Asia.

An Australian citizen, he has authored a number of technical papers and popular articles concerning conservation issues in Australia, North America, and Thailand, and was a contributor to the seminal volume on habitat fragmentation - "Tropical Forest Remnants: Ecology, Conservation and Management". He was commissioned to write a National Tiger Action Plan for Myanmar. Working with WCS, Lynam has trained over 500 government staff of Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia and Malaysia in wildlife ecology, survey and conservation techniques. His favoured field of research is tiger conservation and ecology.

Born and raised in Western Australia, Dr. Lynam has worked for the CSIRO Division of Wildlife Research and the Western Australian Museum before graduating in 1987 with First Class Honours degree in zoology. His thesis research concerned the conservation genetics and breeding ecology of endangered carnivorous marsupials. From 1987-8, he worked for the West Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management where he was involved in the design and execution of biological surveys in rainforest vine thickets, mangroves and semi-arid deserts. From 1990-95, he was engaged in graduate studies at the University of California, San Diego. His doctoral research concerned the effects of forest fragmentation on populations of tropical small mammals on islands in Southern Thailand and was twice funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). He was a National Biological Survey post-doctoral scholar during the period 1996-6 at the University of California, Riverside, where he studied landscape distributions of birds and small mammals in coastal sage scrub habitats in Southern California.