21/08/2012 (The Nation) - People have destroyed and occupied over 10,000 rai of protected peat bogs in Phatthalung, which have been burning for a month, to clear land for a large oil palm plantation, the state environmental watchdog said yesterday.

The Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) has set up 39 teams to probe the illegal issuance of ownership documents for the 550 land plots covering more than 10,000 rai.

Reungchai Prayoonvej, deputy director-general of the DNP, said local people would start burning their farms and palm plantations. Then the fires would grow and spread to nearby protected peat swampland. After these forest reserves were damaged, they would occupy the land.

The prolonged drought has also made the forests especially vulnerable to fires as the water was down to 20 centimetres underground.

Chai Suwanchart, chief of the Wildlife Non-hunting Area Office, said protected forests in Tambon Talay Noi's Pa Hua Keaw village in Phatthalung's Kuan Kha Nun district and Tambon Kreng's Pa Nang Tung village in Nakhon Si Thammarat's Chu-uat district suffered the most encroachment.

These areas were surrounded by oil palm plantations and were only 10 kilometres from the Ramsar protected wetlands.

Four big oil palm plantation operators had occupied about 4,000 rai of the alleged encroached forests. They claimed that they held legal land ownership documents such as Sor Kor 1, Nor Sor 3 and Nor Sor 3 Kor.

In Nakhon Si Thammarat and Phatthalung, at least 15,000 of 300,000 rai of protected forestland has been destroyed by blazes that authorities say were lit by locals who wanted to fish in the bogs.

They burned off the grass cover so they could easily catch fish hidden in the mud, Chai added.

Tanayot Kamnuan of the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency said his agency has used a satellite to detect bush fires in the southern provinces. Since last Wednesday, 24 fires have been burning in protected and non-protected bogs in Nakhon Si Thammarat, Phattha-lung and Narathiwat.

Reungchai said the 39 panels, with 117 forest officials, would take a month to investigate encroachment in these two provinces and punish the offenders.