Among the many forest patches in and around Khao Nor Chuchi, Huai Somset has always had special significance for me. Place names in Thailand are often redolent with the memory of extinct large animals, and of course Huai Somset is one of them, since somset means tapir, an animal I have still to see in the wild. The last Malayan Tapirs in the entire Khao Nor Chuchi area disappeared about ten years ago.

Huai Somset lies in a 300-400 m wide, grassy valley, surrounded by forest, in Tambol Aow Thong, Trang Province. On the west bank this forest comes right down to the banks of the stream, most of the grassy areas lying on the east bank.

In December 1986 , a few months after finding our first Gurney's Pittas, at Bang Tieo, Krabi, Uthai Treesucon and I, joined by Nigel Collar, the Bird Red Data Book compiler, in one of his rare forays into the field, were taken to Huai Somset by Lung Beung, a former bird trapper who lives nearby. Lung Beung and his son, Prasit, put their exemplary bird-finding skills to good use and within half an hour or so had located a pair of Gurney's Pittas—one of very few pairs left in Aow Tong.

I have visited the Huai Somset many times since then, but I nevermanage to get back to as often as I would like. When I was there recently, in December 1996, together with a team from the RFD Management Planning Unit it was a shock to realize that it had been three years since I last set foot in the place. Since shocks usually come not singly but in twos or threes, I was gratified that, for once, it seemed as if it would be the only one I was to receive that day.

To my surprise and pleasure, the forest along the Huai Somset was just as I remembered it. Good, tall moist lowland dipterocarp forest extended down from the nearby hills to the west bank of the huai . The east bank, wereI was standing, was still grassy but it was good to see that quite a bit of regeneration was taking place, much of the area growing back into secondary forest.

Huai Somset lies inside the Khao Pra-Bang Khram Non-Hunting Area, which buffers the wildlife sanctuary of the same name. After the NHA was established, in 1987, there was some continued encroachment of forest until at least 1992, and his had led to the establishment of the now partly productive rubber plantations I could see, extending up the eastern flanks of the valley, on the slopes of the hill known as Khuan Khiam. But these occupied no more than 100 rai in total-------only 20% of the area, and moreover were still tapped by the same five families who were there a decade ago. When considered against the massive ongoing immigration and encroachment into both the non-hunting area and wildlife sanctuary, which is still taking place elsewhere in the tambol , the Huai Somset seemed a model of peace and tranquility. There was one cloud on the Horizon, however, in the shape of the infamous and now-discredited land reform programme, saw phaw kaw .

In 1990 , when the programme was already going full steam ahead in Trang Province, concrete saw phaw kaw markers were scattered thoughout the entire Aow Thong area, in both cultivation and mature forest. Subsequently, however, most of those that were in, or near, the forest were withdrawn. When I visited the Trang Land Reform office to enquire for myself in 1992, the officials assured me that no saw phaw kaw certificates would be issued anywhere within one kilometer of the forest, and that the Huai Somset would not be covered. They even allowed me to copy maps which apparently demonstrated this fact.

Here came my second shock of the day! In spite of what I was told by land reform officials, according to local people all five households in Huai Somset received saw phaw kaw certificates sometime during the 1992-1995 Chuan Leekpai administration.

Now the Huai Somset valley is a narrow tongue of land, surround by forest on all sides. There is no access road. And the valley itself is regenerating back into forest. It lies inside the Khao Pra-Bang Khram Non-Hunting Area, and most of the small area of cultivation that exists was planted not before, but after the non-hunting area was established. Any management planner who examines this area can clearly see that it does not constitute part of the wide area of cultivation outside, but is a tiny island lying inside, and constituting part of, the Khao Nor Chuchi forest. In any sane world, the process of forest regeneration would be allowed to continue uninterrupted until the entire valley was absorbed back into the forest. Yet it seems this is not to be, thanks to an aggressive and ill-conceived government programme which appears in many instances to have been applied so as to buy votes for a particular political party, and which has been one of the main engines of forest encroachment in the 1990s.

The irony of the situation at Huai Somset was heightened by the fact that a tree planting ceremony had been sponsored by that same political party only 2 km away, at the northern entrance to the valley, a few days prior to my visit. The right hand giveth and the left hand taketh awayE.

Philip D. Round