Thailand Environment Ministry Targets Suspected Encroachment at Phuket’s Freedom and Nui Beaches
Thailand’s Environment Ministry says legal action is being prepared over suspected encroachment at Phuket’s Freedom Beach and Nui Beach, while officials also highlighted marine conservation efforts involving leatherback turtles, dugongs and seagrass.
A senior official from Thailand’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said authorities are preparing legal action against those suspected of encroaching on Freedom Beach and Nui Beach in Phuket, warning that no one is above the law.
Pol. Maj. Gen. Nantachat Supamongkol, an assistant minister for natural resources and environment, visited Phuket on July 19 to deliver Environment Minister Suchart Chomklin’s policies to officials from the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources and the Upper Andaman Marine and Coastal Resources Research Center.
The visit focused on protecting marine and coastal resources, conserving endangered species and preventing encroachment on beaches, the sea and other natural areas under government responsibility. Nantachat received a briefing on marine wildlife and environmental conditions and visited a sea turtle nursery and marine animal hospital at the research center, where staff demonstrated treatment for injured aquatic animals.
Nantachat said officials had been instructed to strengthen conservation and law enforcement. He highlighted the successful raising of leatherback turtles in tanks, saying Thailand is one of five countries to have achieved this and that the effort has continued for more than two years. Officials have also been producing food for the turtles.
He said authorities were expanding efforts to plant seagrass as a food source for dugongs, an endangered protected species, and were coordinating a wider seagrass-planting network.
Nantachat warned that anyone who hunts or illegally harms dugongs would face the maximum penalties. He said some people had cut dugong tusks because of superstitious beliefs that they could be used as magical objects, describing the practice as an incorrect belief.
Regarding the Phuket beach cases, Nantachat said the minister had ordered action without exceptions and that officials were not afraid of any influence. He said investigations into suspected encroachment at Freedom Beach and Nui Beach had made significant progress and that further developments would be known soon. He also said authorities intended to pursue people behind the on-site operators, insisting that offenders would be held accountable under the law.
