Similan Guide - News & Infos aus Südostasien und den Similan Inseln

The Similan Marine National Park was designated under the Royal Thai National Park act 1961 by the Royal Forest Department as the 43rd National Park of Thailand.
The Park was founded to protect the tropical marine ecosystem, with its diverse fish and reef life. These marine habitats are very important to many people in Thailand as they provide for cash crop fisheries and other benefits, such as dive tourism, ecotourism and education related activities.
In 1993 the National Park Division of the Royal Forestry department was reorganized and the Marine Park Division was formed and all significant marine and costal ecosystems were included in the new division.
This Marine Park Division is now responsible for the management of the 21 marine national parks in Thailand.
The goals of the Marine Park Division are to manage the marine protected areas according to the National Park act, to revise and update the management strategies, to provide recreation, education and research in a sustainable manner within the marine park.
Tourists and Tour Operators are required to pay an Entrance Fee, which is used to install mooring lines and maintain the Parks buildings and infrastructure.
The Marine Park published a booklet in Thai and English with maps and the location of the moorings as well as an explanation on how to use them…
All boats entering the Park need a license.
Right now the Park is considering implementing a policy that all boats need to install proper marine toilets and waste water tanks.
However, there should be some diving limitations in place to protect the under water world from the increasing pressure and degeneration from the dive tourism.

The Marine Park Division is quite successful in protecting the marine protected areas within the Thai waters, but sometimes they react more than they actually act on some issues. However the biggest thread for the marine parks is not the tourism industry but comes from the fisheries industry, because they often enter the park to fish within its boundaries. Unfortunately these fishing boats are heavily armed so that the park rangers often need to call the Royal Thai Navy in to stop these illegal activities from happen.

There are two good manuals about the marine park available:
Marine Park Manual about the Andaman Sea
Marine Park Manual about Ecotourism in Thai seas

Tags: Ecosystems, Royal Forest Department, Similan Islands, Similan Marine National Park

This entry was posted on Samstag, Mai 3rd, 2008 at 21:56 and is filed under Similan Islands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.