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The Convention on Biological Diversity's post-2020 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) includes targets to formally protect thirty percent of Earth by 2030 and stimulate financialization of biodiversity conservation. This paper foregrounds potential risks and limitations of the GBF in Thailand. It examines the historical context of state-run protected areas, including their role in facilitating state territorialization and dispossession, political and cultural persecution, and deleterious economic agendas. It then shows that implementation in Thailand could displace residents of more than 200 villages and supplant roughly forty percent (3,951 square kilometers) of all state-registered community forest lands, which provide various livelihood, cultural, and conservation benefits. The paper challenges three assumptions: that parties to the Convention will recognize the rights and agency of Indigenous Peoples and local communities; that state-run protected areas are managed for biodiversity conservation and not for economic growth; and that perpetual economic growth and modernization are compatible with conservation. Effective and equitable conservation in Thailand and elsewhere requires more socially and ecologically responsive community rights-based approaches that empower (rather than supersede) customary institutions and transcend unsustainable political-economic imperatives for privatization and perpetual economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In areas of high human-elephant conflict, cultivating crops that are less attractive to elephants can be a viable strategy for coexistence. Farmers in these regions often grow crops like pineapple, which are palatable to elephants and attract them into human-dominated landscapes. This study, conducted in Ruam Thai Village, adjacent to Kuiburi National Park in Thailand, evaluated the socio-economic factors affecting farmers' interest in alternative crop cultivation and assessed the impact of elephants and environmental threats on plots containing pineapple and alternative crops. Our findings revealed that 70% of households (N = 239) rely on pineapple cultivation as their primary source of income. However, 49% of interviewed pineapple farmers reported that their cultivation was not profitable, largely owing to the high costs of agro-chemical inputs. The majority (91%) of farmers experienced negative consequences from living near wild elephants, and 50% expressed interest in cultivating alternative crops. Farmers who frequently experienced elephant visits, felt they could coexist with elephants, and perceived both positive and negative consequences from them were more likely to be interested in alternative crop cultivation. Elephants eliminated over 80% of the pineapple but less than 6% of any alternative crop species across all test plots. Using a crop scoring system based on ecological, economic, and social factors, we identified lemongrass and citronella as the most suitable alternative crop species for the study site. This multidisciplinary study highlights interventions needed to reduce barriers and increase motivators for local farmers to adopt elephant-friendly agriculture as a sustainable human–elephant coexistence strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Human–elephant conflict is a growing global problem. To mitigate such conflict, understanding factors affecting elephant intrusions into human-dominated areas is crucial. These factors are, however, complex because they are site specific and context dependent. Aims: This study aimed to identify factors associated with crop damage incidents from elephants in a buffer zone of a protected area in western Thailand. Methods: Interviews were conducted with local people to quantify crop damage by elephants between November 2020 to April 2021. We used compositional analysis to determine whether different crop types received different damage from elephants, and logistic regression analysis to examine environmental factors associated with crop damage incidents. Key results: Although it was previously thought that elephants focus on dominant palatable crops, we found that small patches of highly preferred crops can influence where elephants choose to feed. Distance from village was also a significant factor in crop foraging. Crop damage was not different between dry and wet seasons, probably because key crops were available year-round. Conclusions: Crop damage occurred across multiple crop types but mainly those with higher sugar content. The damage mostly occurred in fields farther from villages, suggesting that presence of humans may alter elephant crop foraging. No specific seasonal period of crop damage was observed. Implications: Changing crop types from species preferred by elephants to less preferred species and growing mixed species (multi-crop systems) instead of single species (mono-crops) may reduce elephant incursions. However, this needs field testing, including market-based assessments to evaluate the economic viability for farmers. Human–elephant conflicts occur frequently across countries within the elephant species range, but solutions remain elusive and are probably site-specific. In our study in western Thailand, pineapple received the most damage. Plantations further away from villages and those with larger areas of corn (an elephant-preferred crop) were associated with more crop damage. Based on local experience, planting multiple crops less preferred by elephants may reduce conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tropical dry forests, including dry dipterocarp forests of Asia, are in jeopardy from increasing human pressures, especially agricultural encroachment, hunting, and probably climate change. Quantifying the impacts of these pressures and implementing effective management solutions have been hampered by a scarcity of regional long-term wildlife monitoring data. Our study examined long-term (22-year, 1999-2020) changes in the relative abundances of six avian guilds at a small-scale (30 survey points) in Chatthin Wildlife Sanctuary in Myanmar's Central Dry Zone. We focused on common feeding guilds that have significant effects on ecosystem processes, including seed dispersal (frugivores), insect abundance regulation (bark-gleaning insectivores [woodpeckers], foliage-gleaning insectivores, sallying insectivores, and terrestrial insectivores), and seed predation (granivores). We also used data from five focal species within these guilds to further assess long-term trends. Trends in relative abundances were analysed in relation to time (survey year) and forest disturbance. Although the forest within a 300-m radius of the survey points appeared to be only moderately disturbed, relative abundances of frugivores, granivores, and terrestrial insectivores declined over the study period. Woodpeckers declined in response to specific forest disturbance incidents, but did not show long-term declines. Foliage-gleaning and sallying insectivore abundances did not change significantly. Among individual focal species, blossom-headed parakeet (Psittacula roseata) and white-browed fantail (Rhipidura aureola) abundances declined. The parakeet and fantail declines are particularly salient because these two species are typically associated with dry forest, although the parakeet was probably highly impacted by poaching. In contrast, relative abundances of the more generalist common woodshrike (Tephrodornis pondicerianus) increased over time, golden-fronted leafbird (Chloropsis aurifrons) likely also increased, while rufous treepie (Denmdrocitta vagabunda) did not show a clear trend. Although our monitoring data on human disturbance was limited, most declines were probably a consequence of increased human use inside the sanctuary rather than climate change, indicating significant cumulative effects of extensive local human use of the forest during the 22-year period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Limestone karst habitats are threatened globally by quarrying for production of concrete and cement. A significant area of limestone karst shared among the provinces of Saraburi, Lopburi and Nakhon Ratchasima in Thailand encompasses the entire global range of a threatened bird taxon, the Rufous Limestone Babbler Gypsophila calcicola. We estimate that 10% of the suitable habitat for this species had already been lost to quarrying by 2020, and the extension of already proposed concessions could increase this to one-quarter, with the total area impacted by proposed future quarrying as great as 273 km2, or one and a half times greater than the entire area thought to support the species, within a few years. Only 2.66 km2 (1.4% of the species' range) has received formal habitat protection as national park. We propose further surveys of the babbler be incorporated as part of a wider biotic survey of the Saraburi Group Limestones, leading to the development of an integrated management and zoning plan that takes account of the distributional knowledge of other threatened endemic taxa of this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]