Thai Highlands - Environment and Human Impact

Environment and Human Impact

The natural environment of the hills used to be dense montane rain forest. Swidden agricultural practices have much reduced the pristine old-growth forest areas which have been replaced by secondary forest.

For centuries the Thai highlands have been inhabited with hill tribes mostly from Chinese or Tibeto-Burman descent, such as the Akha, Yao, Lahu, Khmu, Hmong and Lisu. These human groups immigrated into this relatively empty region fleeing persecution or harsh central rule in their respective environments, as well as seeking new land for their shifting agricultural productions system. For the past decades these groups have been undergoing a process of integration into the Thai mainstream.

Owing to the unrest in Burma, some refugee camps have been established for the cross-border refugees in the Thai highlands. Certain Kayah and Karen communities, like the 'Long-necked Karen', are regularly visited by organized tourist groups.

At higher altitudes, above about 1,000m, one of the main crops was opium until the 1990s, when the combined effects of development became evident - from the construction of roads into the remote area, increasingly efficient policing, and opium replacement programs.

Yearly wildfires are started on purpose by local farmers during the dry season in different areas of Northern Thailand. Often speculators also hire people to set forests on fire in order to claim land title deeds for the areas that have become "degraded forest". The smoke produced by these fires is the main cause of the intense seasonal air pollution in the Thai highlands, also known as the "northern haze". Fires also contribute to the floods in the country by completely denuding the undergrowth of the woods and the dry forest soil leads to lower water intake for the trees to extract when the rains arrive.

Presently large tracts of the mountains are covered with a mixed vegetation resulting from the capacity of the efficient shifting agricultural system being exceeded. As a result large areas end up becoming dominated by Imperata cylindrica grass, which is used throughout Thailand as roofing material. Cattle can graze on the grass to an extent, as agricultural science research in the 1970s defined. The longer term environmental care of the region is associated with forestry and in the lower reaches, perennial fruit like peaches and other trees. Also some projects for the restoration of forest cover have been undertaken in ecologically degraded areas.