The cabinet has recently agreed to a project to turn 80000 rai (1,280 sq km) of land into rubber plantations (Bangkok Post 13 July 2010). A total of 3.97 billion baht has been earmarked for the project, including 2.82 billion baht for fertiliser and rubber saplings, 800 million baht for training courses and the rest, about 351 million baht, for “management fees”.
Deputy PM Suthep Thueksueban, associated with so many forest encroachment scandals throughout his long political career, reportedly insisted on the project, though exactly why it was necessary to provide public funds to support this crop was not made clear, especially since rubber planting is inevitably linked with forest encroachment.
Huge areas of “degraded” national reserve forest and public land are already being illegally encroached by rubber growers, many of whom are retired civil servants, doctors, teachers, and other former government officials who ought to know better. These are among the last people who either need or deserve support from the public purse.
From the biodiversity standpoint, growing rubber is highly damaging. Even so-called “degraded forest” and croplands in North, West and Eastern Thailand continue to support a moderate community of lowland forest birds in those scattered trees that remain. Arguably, populations of scarce species like Rufous-winged Buzzard, Blossom-headed and Red-breasted Parakeets, Fulvous-breasted Woodpeckers and Burmese Shrikes are higher on present day farmland and “degraded” forest than they are in our (mainly mountainous) protected areas which are largely unsuitable for these lowland, open woodland species.
Rubber plantations are like a creeping cancer for biodiversity—a sterile green blanket that holds almost no food for either insectivorous or fruit-eating birds. Extension of rubber plantations will further exacerbate the ongoing decline in wild bird populations.
Even without taking further loss of biodiversity into account, the Bangkok Post concluded that the project itself was badly conceived and the budget allocated for already prosperous rubber growers totally unjustified.
Rufous-winged Buzzard and Fulvous-breasted Woodpecker are among the many lowland bird species threatened by the spread of rubber and oil-palm plantations
