Thailand’s ecotourism
While Thailand benefits from being one of the top 10 most touristed nations on earth, welcoming 25 million annual visitors presents considerable challenges for the sustainability of its natural environment and rich cultural traditions. Fortunately, minimising your footprint in Thailand has never been easier, with countless opportunities to enjoy a greener visit, from homestays with hill tribes and helping with the harvest, to supporting endangered wildlife.
Khao Yai National Park, Thailand.
1. Green spaces
There is perhaps no better way to appreciate Thailand than its raw, natural state, and with more than 100 national parks dotted around the country, there are plenty of options to do so. The kingdom's first protected swathe of jungle, Kho Yai National Park, is also its most popular. With around 50 kilometres of hiking trails, you can choose from easy rambles to more challenging multi-day treks led by a park ranger. The park is home to a vast expanse of increasingly rare monsoon rainforest and some of Thailand's last remaining wild tigers, gibbons and elephants. And with almost 400 species of bird, it’s a twitcher’s paradise.
Khao Sok National Park in southern Thailand is another top pick. One of the oldest evergreen rainforests in the world, it also provides a haven for a host of wildlife, including Asian black bears, leopards and several species of monkey. Many of these animals are notoriously elusive, but there is plenty more to see – set on the eastern slopes of
the Tenasserin Mountain Range, the park’s heavy rainfall creates spectacular waterfalls.
Ang Thong Marine National Park, Thailand.
The inspiration behind cult backpacker film The Beach, Ang Thong National Marine Park is an archipelago of 42 jewel-like islands and limestone karsts, around 30 kilometres west of Ko Samui. Once a hangout for pirates, its pristine beaches and coral reefs are now protected and a shelter for dolphins and sea otters, as well as birds, including swiftlets, whose homes are the main ingredient in bird’s nest soup. For more information on Thailand’s parks see Department of National Parks (dnp.go.th/parkreserve).
When visiting national parks in Thailand or elsewhere, be sure to take out everything you bring in, and resist the temptation to pocket a souvenir (including seashells)
or feed wild animals, which can make them aggressive (especially monkeys).
2. Wildlife spotting and interactions
For many years, riding an elephant in Thailand was synonymous with the visitor experience. However, there is now growing evidence to prove that the practice is harmful for the pachyderms, with elephant charities comparing it with poaching and the ivory trade in terms of impact. While nothing beats the thrill of spotting an elephant in the wild, fortunately there are a growing number of elephant sanctuaries in Thailand that offer more ethical interactions such as walking with and bathing the gentle giants. For a roundup of Thailand's more sustainable operators, see Lonely Planet’s guide to interacting ethically with elephants
in Thailand.
Tourists help to bathe an elephant at Elephants World, Kanchanaburi.
If you've always wanted to get up close and personal with a tiger, it's also worth reading up on the disturbing animal welfare issues involved. Animal welfare groups have condemned popular Thai operations such as Tiger Temple (Kanchanaburi) and Tiger Kingdom (Phuket), and called for the animals to be housed in much larger enclosures and to stop all physical contact between them and visitors. Often billed as ‘sanctuaries’, tiger petting zoos have not only been linked with the illegal wildlife trade and animal abuse, but also present great risk to visitors – an Australian tourist was seriously mauled at Tiger Kingdom in 2014, while a monk was attacked by a tiger in his ‘care’ at the Tiger Temple in 2015.
Thailand’s gibbons have also paid the price for what many tourists consider a harmless happy snap – more than half of Thailand's white-handed gibbon population has been wiped out in the past 30 years, with babies taken from their mothers to be kept as pets and pimped out as photo props. The Gibbon Rehabilitation Project (GRP), set in tropical forest around the Bang Pae waterfall in Phuket, rescues abandoned and mistreated animals and helps them return to the freedom of the forest. Swing by to see these adorable, acrobatic gibbons in action before they’re released (sadly, depending on their injuries, not all of them can be) or go a step further and volunteer with GRP or other local organisations, such as Soi Dog (soidog.org), also in Phuket. Asia's largest animal foundation, Soi Dog works with domestic animals and has sterilised and vaccinated over 81,500 dogs and cats to date, making Phuket officially rabies-free.
Karen woman, northern Thailand.
3. Agrotourism
Agriculture has been a major part of the Thai way of life for centuries. And thanks to a growing numb