He poached them all- tigers, wild boars, gibbons, elephants. And not just animals. While hunting in the forest, Kuman carved out and sold pieces of aloe wood, which produce a valuable aromatic resin used to make perfume and incense.
Although the aloe wood and animals he took from Khao Yai National Park were protected species, Kuman sold them to survive; the environmental importance assigned to Khao Yai as a UNESCO World Heritage Site meant little, if anything, to his hand-to-mouth existence. Yet Kuman's situation was not unique, and it illustrated one of many challenges environmentalists must tackle in the field of wildlife conservation.
In more than one hundred communities around Khao Yai, thousands of villagers, like Kuman, hunted illegally in the park. This was often in response to widespread poverty and the absence of alternative livelihoods for villagers.
"The only place I could go to look for income was the jungle"
"The only place I could go to look for income was the jungle," recalls Kuman, who could make a month's salary in a single day by snaring a tiger. "It just seemed natural for
me at the time."
Selling aloe wood was also easy money.
According to Steve Galster, co-founder of Wildlife Alliance and its Southeast Asian partner, Peun Pa, it's understandable why villagers take to the forests as a source of income.
"You can see why someone like Kuman would have gone to the forest as a source of income," says Galster. "Without knowing why these species are protected and the long-term damage caused to the forest, poaching was just another way to make a living."
The terrible impact of poaching on Khao Yai's biodiversity quickly became apparent. Few tigers survive in the park
and some species are already extinct, including Khao Yai's emblem, the Schomburgk's Deer.
Moreover, the dwindling number of animals in the park has forced poachers to supplement their income by cutting away even more aloe wood from the forest. Distilling factories have sprung up around Khao Yai to process the wood into oil, destined for the Middle East and other parts of the world. If nothing is done, it's estimated the aloe wood trees will become extinct within a decade.
Kuman's arrest in November 2001 altered his relationship with the park, as well as his role in the community. Before his arrest, Kuman was an expert in trapping animals and extracting aloe wood from the forest. He was also leading groups of poachers into the park. Only after his arrest did Kuman first come into contact with NGO staff working to protect the park.
Steve Galster of Wildlife Alliance and his staff from PeunPa were training Khao Yai's rangers in park protection. After meeting with Kuman, Galster recruited him and used Kuman's knowledge of the park and expertise as a poacher to attack the poaching problem at its roots. Galster's team also helped Kuman find an alternative way of making money, thereby minimizing the risk that he might return to poaching in the park.
"Even though our ranger training effectively reduced poaching in Khao Yai and remains essential to park protection, we realized poor villagers with no other way of earning income were always the ones being arrested," says Galster. "And we would see no end of this unless we came up with something else for them."
Together, Wildlife Alliance and PeunPa developed a more comprehensive approach to protecting Khao Yai. While continuing to protect the park through ranger training and park patrols, the two partners sent a community outreach team into villages to develop and teach alternative ways of living and generating income without relying on poaching.
It was this kind of support that allowed Kuman to head-up an organic communal farm in his village. The farm, which supports 17 families that would otherwise have relied on poaching, is self-sustaining and profitable, producing fish, mushrooms and other vegetables for sale at local markets.
Kuman helped reduce his village's dependence on hunting in Khao Yai by training others in sustainable agriculture and speaking out regularly against poaching.
"If we can help all the poachers like me to do something else, then I can say to myself I am no longer damaging the forest but truly the protector of the park," says a proud Kuman.
Wildlife Alliance and PeunPa currently work in several villages around Khao Yai, helping ex-poachers and their families find a new, sustainable way of living. The success of these projects has prompted many other villages to request the same support. Unfortunately, demand for seed funding is exceeding our ability to provide it.
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