Thai Poachers Hunt Down Rare Trees
The photos were dark and grainy, but Kasidis Chanpradub, a senior officer with an elite paramilitary unit of the Thai park rangers, knew what he was looking at. “They are poachers, for sure,” he told Newsweek. “Nobody else would be out there at that time of night.”
After a morning briefing at the rangers’ offices in a remote corner of Thailand’s Khao Yai National Park, Chanpradub deployed five men dressed in camouflage and combat boots. Armed with assault rifles, they fanned out beneath the thick jungle canopy, looking for poachers. The area they protect is vast—2,375 square miles of forest across five national parks in eastern Thailand, which UNESCO has declared a World Heritage site. More than 800 species live here, including endangered animals
