Dugong miracle

Published in 2010

Beneath translucent waters, once-ravaged seagrasses burgeon. Along the coast, devastated mangrove forests rise again. And inland, along the waterways that link mountain to sea, the first green shoots of renewal are springing up.

Behind the miracle is one of the world’s vanishing marine mammals, the dugong, of which only about 250 in total remain in Thailand’s coastal waters. Behind the dugong is a softly-spoken conservationist, Pisit Charnsnoh.

Employing the dugong as the emblem of its imperilled marine environment, Charnsnoh’s Yadfon (Raindrop) Organisation has awakened the inhabitants of this coastline to their plight and begun to reverse the devastation caused by commercial overfishing, the cutting of mangrove forests for charcoal or fish farms, deforestation and pollution of water. Already, the evidence that degradation can be reversed is piling up.

In the five years since he was selected as an Associate Laureate of the 2004 Rolex Awards, Charnsnoh has recruited the residents of 17 villages specifically to help conserve the dugong and its habitat, and Yadfon works with a total of 79 villages in community-based resource management. In 13 local schools, a new generation of young Thais are learning about the dugong and the importance of ecosystems that sustain mammal, fish and people alike.

Since he began his battle with destruction a quarter of a century ago, 23 coastal mangrove forests – the essential nurseries for fish, prawns and other sea life – have been replanted, protected and preserved. Offshore, in four large areas totalling more than 100km2, seagrass beds that support Trang’s 120 dugongs are flourishing again with the banishment of large industrial trawlers and the push-nets of local fishers.

Importantly, from Charnsnoh’s point of view, the Thai government – initially sceptical – now trusts local villagers to care for their own resources and is working with them to do so. Thai scientists who studied the achievements of the Trang villagers concluded that they were doing a better job of restoring and managing their mangroves than government-run projects were elsewhere.

Some battles have been tough, he adds. Confrontations with large trawler companies, in particular, were fierce. But local people campaigned energetically. In the end, the government agreed to enforce fishing restrictions and inspect the corporate fishers. “We still see trawlers from outside coming into the protected areas, so the local fishers committee arranges with the police for their arrest,” he says.

Remove the trawlers and the seagrass beds spring back in months – and, with them, the nurseries for the fish that supply local villagers with their main livelihood. “The picture is one of recovering ecosystem health,” Charnsnoh says. “All are now well protected through the work of the community.”

However, Trang’s dugong population remains on a knife edge. But at least these large mammals now have places of safety to browse and raise their young – whereas previously they had none.

Charnsnoh’s success has attracted international attention and he was recently invited to help Indonesia develop its dugong conservation strategy.

Moving upstream

Charnsnoh is working to extend his project’s reach up and down the coast, as well as inland to the farming areas, the rainforest and mountains. Neighbouring provinces on the Andaman Sea coast have already begun to adopt his approach. “We would like to work across the whole of Thailand,” he says.

Recognizing that the coast is linked to the inland farming areas, foothills and forested mountains by water, Charnsnoh is also working to extend his environmental methods “upstream” to rural and forest communities who are also facing terrible and inexorable destruction of their natural resources. “Trang has only 19 per cent of its forests left, so it is urgent we work with forest villagers to achieve the same as in the coastal mangrove forests.”

The emblem of this new campaign is the sago palm, a valuable water-loving tree facing heavy destruction. “It is a staple food. It protects streams and waterways. It acts as a wind break. It provides medication and materials for handicrafts. Like the dugong it has great symbolic virtue,” Charnsnoh says.

So far Yadfon has worked with local farmers to re-establish and protect sago palms in three waterways extending for 14km. Here too, there are signs that the local fish are returning.

Undaunted by large challenges, Charnsnoh declares his aim is to help develop a community conservation plan covering the entire river basin, from the mountains to the sea. In this, he plans to join forces with an equally inspiring Thai conservationist and Rolex Laureate, Pilai Poonswad, who has employed a beautiful bird, the hornbill, to alert mountain villagers to the decline in their natural resources.

In this way, stepping softly and wisely, village by village, school by school and network by network, Pisit Charnsnoh plans to re-green his country.

Julian Cribb

iTunes Channel

iTunes Channel

View and download Rolex Awards videos in iTunes.

Go to iTunes