In a move to promote modern scientific management of the national forest,
the post-monarchy government established in 1932 passed the Forest Protection
and Reservation Act of 1938, enabling the RFD to map and declare specific
territories as either protected or reserve forest (Peluso and Vandergeest, 2001).
The overall structure of the Act was based on the Indian and Burmese forest
Acts. Notably, however, the Siamese law had no provision for the kind of village
forests allowed by its colonial neighbours but did allow local livelihood
use throughout reserve forests (Vandergeest, 1996). The demarcation process
was slow, which can be attributed to legislation that required extensive local
consultation, and to an RFD that lacked the political means to assert strong
territorial control against a more powerful Ministry of the Interior (Peluso and
Vandergeest, 2001). The RFD thus focused on species control but continued
to pressure parliament to allow more rapid demarcation of forest reserve, a
wish that was not granted until 1958 when F.M. Sarit established a military
government