In this abstract, This study is concentrate on the Rights over the protected lands: granting community usufruct rights to secure land use and forest conservation. The communities were established before the park designation so removing those leads to conflicts between people and park officers. In many cases, including Phu Kao–Phu Phan Kham National Park (PKPP), Northeast Thailand, the Department of Park, Wildlife and Plant (DNP) solves this problem by granting those communities usufruct rights over the settlement lands where communities continue to live in the protected areas. The case of PKPP might be one among many other cases in Thailand showing that a model of granting usufruct rights to communities may be able to help reducing conflicts between the Parks and communities but fails to tackle land encroachment issues.