The Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary (, ) is a protected area in Thailand in the northern part of Kanchanaburi Province and the southern part of Tak Province. It was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1972, and a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1991 together with the adjoining Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary.

Location and topography

The sanctuary is at the western national border of Thailand with Burma, in the southern area of the Dawna Range. It extends northeast of the Three Pagodas Pass from Sangkhla Buri District in Kanchanaburi Province into Umphang District in Tak Province.

The wildlife sanctuary stretches over an area of 2,279,500 rai ~ , and is the largest protected area in Thailand.

Together with the adjoining Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary () it constitutes the core area of the Western Forest Complex, which represents the largest agglomeration of contiguous protected area in mainland Southeast Asia, .<br>

Management of this wildlife sanctuary is split between two protected areas regional offices: PARO 14 (Tak) manages the east part and PARO 3 (Ban Pong) manages the west part of this wildlife sanctuary.

  • Thung Yai Naresuan West Wildlife Sanctuary, 1,331,062 rai ~
  • Thung Yai Naresuan East Wildlife Sanctuary, 948,438 rai ~

The area is predominantly mountainous and composed of various limestones interspersed with massive intrusions of granite and smaller outcrops of quartzite and schist. Elevations range from about at the Vajiralongkorn Reservoir in the south of the sanctuary to its highest peak, Khao Tai Pa, at . Major rivers are the Mae Klong and the Mae Chan which originate in the Umphang Wildlife Sanctuary and join in Thung Yai into the Upper Khwae Yai which feeds the Si Nakharin Reservoir. Various smaller rivers in the south and southwest feed the Vajiralongkorn Reservoir while in the northwestern part of the sanctuary the Mae Kasat and the Mae Suriya flow into Burma.

Fauna

Like the flora, the fauna of Thung Yai provides a specific mix of species with Sundaic, Indo-Chinese, Indo-Burmese and Sino-Himalayan affinities due to the sanctuary's particular biogeographic location. The savanna forest of Thung Yai is the most complete and secure example of Southeast Asia's dry tropical forest.

Among the mammal species living in Thung Yai are lar gibbon (Hylobates lar), various species of macaque (Macaca) and lutung (Trachypithecus), Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris tigris), Indochinese leopard (Panthera pardus delacouri), clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa), sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) and Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus), Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus), Indian elephant (Elephas maximus indicus), gaur (Bos gaurus), hog deer (Cervus porcinus), sambar (Rusa unicolor), Fea's muntjac (Muntiacus feae) and Sumatran serow (Capricornis sumatraensis) as well as many bat species probably including Kitti's hog-nosed bat (Craseonycteris thonglongyai). Thung Yai is part of the Western Forest Complex, which is the largest tiger habitat in the Southeast Asia region, with around 200 of the animals living there. The area is known as a natural breeding area for tigers in Thailand and Myanmar as well.

Bird species sighted in Thung Yai include white-winged wood duck (Cairina scutulata), kalij pheasant (Lophura leucomelanos), grey peacock-pheasant (Polyplectron bicalcaratum), green peafowl (Pavo muticus), spot-billed pelican (Pelecanus philippensis), Oriental darter (Anhinga melanogaster), painted stork (Mycteria leucocephala), greater adjutant (Leptoptilos dubius), red-headed vulture (Sarcogyps calvus), mountain hawk-eagle (Nisaetus nipalensis), lesser fish eagle (Ichthyophaga humilis) and all six species of hornbill (Bucerotidae) living in mainland Southeast Asia.

The nomination for the two wildlife sanctuaries, Thung Yai Naresuan and Huai Kha Khaeng, to become World Heritage Sites lists some 120 species of mammal, 400 birds, 96 reptiles, 43 amphibians, and 113 species of fish, but research on the biodiversity in the sanctuaries is sparse. In early 2018, Premchai Karnasuta, the president of the Italian-Thai Development PLC (ITD), one of Thailand's largest construction companies, was arrested in the sanctuary in possession of skinned carcasses of protected wild animals, including a black leopard, a Kalij pheasant, and a common muntjac (also known as a barking deer), as well as three rifles and ammunition. Premchai faces several charges including trespassing and poaching. He has maintained his innocence. "I didn't do it", he told local media. He has failed to explain, however, why he was in the wildlife sanctuary and how the carcasses of the freshly killed leopard and several other endangered animals ended up in his possession. If convicted, he may be incarcerated for up to 28 years. Conservationists fear that the billionaire will be let off lightly for a wildlife crime that would see an average citizen sent to prison for years.

Illegal poaching by the rich and powerful is common in Thailand, said a spokesman for the Wildlife Friends Foundation. "The police, rich people and government officials do it all the time", he said. "I think it's because rich people want to show off to their friends that they have barami (, social power), that they can afford to hunt because they have so much money."

History

Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic stone tools have been found in the Khwae Noi and Khwae Yai River valleys and parts of the sanctuary were inhabited by Neolithic man. For at least 700 years, the Dawna-Tenasserim region has been home to Mon and Karen people, but burial grounds in Thung Yai and Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary have not been systematically researched.

The Thai name "Thung Yai Naresuan" refers to the "big field" (thung yai) or savanna in the centre of the sanctuary, and to King Naresuan, a famous Siamese ruler who supposedly based his army in the area to wage war against Burma sometime during his reign of the Ayutthaya Kingdom from 1590 until his death in 1605. governmental authorities regard the people living in Thung Yai as a threat to the sanctuary and pursue their resettlement.

Karen villages in Huai Kha Khaeng were removed when the sanctuary was established in 1972, and in the late-1970s the remaining communities in Huai Kha Khaeng had to leave when the Si Nakharin Dam flooded their settlement areas. During the 1980s and early-1990s, villages of the Hmong ethnic minority group were removed from the Huai Kha Khaeng and Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuaries. The resettlement of the remaining Karen in Thung Yai was announced in the management plan for the sanctuary, drafted in the late-1980s, as well as in the proposal for the world heritage site. But, when the Thai Royal Forest Department tried to remove them in the early-1990s, it had to reverse the resettlement scheme due to strong public criticism. Since then, the authorities have used repression, intimidation, and terror to convince the Karen to leave their homeland "voluntarily", and placed restrictions on their traditional land use system which will inevitably cause its breakdown and deprive the Karen of subsistence.