Thamarong Somsak had a job in a printing business but he always felt the pull of the outdoors. He’d grown up around the forests of his native province southeast of Bangkok and the lure of the wild never went away. One day, unhappy in his factory work, he visited the Thap Lan National Park close to the Cambodian border. He asked for a job as a ranger there, even though it meant halving his $500 monthly salary. “Nature has always been a part of me since I was a little boy,” says Thamarong, a 35-year-old who wears a Buddhist amulet and is nicknamed Chate. “I have always dreamed that one day I would be here.”
It would be a charming tale were it not for the darker reality that surrounds Chate and his colleagues. He’s standing amid the sawdust and plastic oil containers of an abandoned sawmill set up by illegal loggers. The poachers have left behind a tree stump and offcuts. Nondescript brown on the outside, the timber’s rich red interior reveals it as rosewood, a luxury product for which men will kill to satisfy the hunger of newly wealthy Chinese consumers. Chate counts the growth lines on the stump and laments: “This one is at least a hundred years old.”
Chate is part of a team that treks deep into the forest to try to stop an illicit multinational trade that thrives in Cambodia and its hinterland. This corner of the Thap Lan protected area is far removed from the beaches and temples of tourist Thailand — there are probably more tigers than holidaymakers here. The rangers (and poachers) have cut a few paths through the trees but mostly the place is knotty with creepers and thick with humidity and insect life.