Qualla: Botum Sakor National Park

Botum Sakor National Park: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dean Croshere from Jomtien, Thailand, CC BY 2.0. Before light reaches the canopy, the gibbons start. Pileated gibbon pairs sing at dawn — the male jet black, the female pale buff with a dark cap and belly — and the duet is a property claim, made by two animals who will hold the same patch of forest together for life. Researchers have estimated that as much as a tenth of the world's remaining pileated gibbons live on this single peninsula. The same peninsula carries a 3,200-metre international runway, a port cut for deep-draught ships, and a lease that does not expire until 2107.

Image: Dean Croshere from Jomtien, Thailand | CC BY 2.0

Botum Sakor National Park: A Peninsula Shrugged Off the Cardamoms

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stefan Fussan, Public domain. Botum Sakor pushes southwest out of the Cardamom Mountains into the Gulf of Thailand, and at the hinge the terrain changes character completely. Behind it the Cardamoms rise steep and streaming with rain. Here the land lies down. Most of the park's 1,826 square kilometres is gent...

Image: Stefan Fussan | Public domain

Botum Sakor National Park: The Uncounted

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dean Croshere from Jomtien, Thailand, CC BY 2.0. Little sustained fieldwork has been published here, which means the species lists are almost certainly short. Even so, over a quarter of the mammals recorded in the park carry some degree of global conservation concern: hairy-nosed and smooth-coated otters, the large-toothed ferr...

Image: Dean Croshere from Jomtien, Thailand | CC BY 2.0

Botum Sakor National Park: One Hundred and Nineteen Thousand Hectares

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dean Croshere from Jomtien, Thailand, CC BY 2.0. The park was two years old when the leasing started in earnest. In November 1998 the Chinese firm Green Rich signed for 602 square kilometres of oil palm, fruit trees and acacia, more than eighty percent of it inside the park. Then a tapioca concession in 2010, a casino operator'...

Image: Dean Croshere from Jomtien, Thailand | CC BY 2.0

Botum Sakor National Park: Dara Sakor

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dean Croshere from Jomtien, Thailand, CC BY 2.0. The largest single concession was signed in April 2008 — 360 square kilometres, ninety-nine years, granted to the Tianjin-linked Union Development Group for a resort city called Dara Sakor. More than a thousand families lived on that land. Their homes were demolished, in many cas...

Image: Dean Croshere from Jomtien, Thailand | CC BY 2.0

Botum Sakor National Park: Snares and Surveys

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dean Croshere from Jomtien, Thailand, CC BY 2.0. The quieter damage is harder to photograph from orbit. Snare lines are set through the undergrowth, indiscriminate by design, and small mammals are taken opportunistically for food or for the traditional medicine trade. Snakes — king cobras, Malayan pit vipers — are killed on sig...

Image: Dean Croshere from Jomtien, Thailand | CC BY 2.0