Nearly 1,000 rai out of 2,762 rai inspected and seized by the taskforce have been found having false claims laid as the agricultural land reform plots, highlighting the forest encroachment resulted from abuses of state power.

The task force held the press conference yesterday, summing up its two-week operation in Thap Lan, which is the country’s second largest with around 1.4 million rai (224,000 hectares).

The park has suffered  extensive encroachment with many popular resorts set up by influential figures, including politicians and high ranking officials.

The problem has been raised in recent years at the World Heritage Committee meetings – described as one of its “most depressing” issues, and one that posed a threat to the world heritage status.

The government has been trying to address the issue since 2011 by strictly enforcing forest laws against encroachers.

These include the high-profile case involving former deputies of the national police chief Pol General Jumpol Manmai, who was brought to Nakhon Ratchasima’s provincial court earlier this month to hear the verdict on the charge against him of encroaching on the forest. He received a jail term after confessing.

However, a number of resort owners still refuse to give up their illegal land plots. This has led park officials to enforce Article 22 under the National Parks Act, which gives them the power to remove properties encroaching on park areas after 30 days’ notice.

Chaiwat Limlikhit-aksorn, who heads up the taskforce, told the press conference that the taskforce would proceed with filing complaints against agricultural land reform officials who were found to help encroachers to lay false claims over plots, and ask Alro to revoke the claims.

As of March 29, 482 encroachment charges have been laid in Thap Lan, with a number of cases involving such false claims, reflecting the problem of unclear boundary demarcation between state lands that opens a loophole for exploitation.

The government is trying to fix this problem by introducing “One map”, the new map ratio to be used by all state agencies working on state land.