Thailand: With social media and academics, villagers save ancestral forest

Community members of Ban Boon Rueang declare their commitment to protecting wetlands during World Wetland Day 2020. - Picture courtesy from The Straits Times/Asian News Network

BOON RUEANG (Thailand), Sept 29 (Reuters): The villagers of Ban Boon Rueang in northern Thailand had long known that they benefited from the community wetland forest that supplied them with fish and firewood, but it wasn't until devastating floods in 2010 that they realised just how much.

That year, flooding from the Ing river which often spills its banks in the annual rainy season, was particularly severe, inundating several villages. Ban Boon Rueang escaped the worst of it because the 236-hectare wetland forest served as a buffer.