Riviera
Beach Dead in the Water
First published in BCST's Bulletin(Vol.18 No.5 May
2001)
Riviera Beach Dead in the Water!
Those who have followed the long-running Riviera Beach encroachment at Khao
Sam Roi Yot
National Park will be interested to Know that the episode appears to be finally closed (predictably,though,
through force of circumstances rather than through any action taken by our civil service "custodians of
the environment")
The Riviera Beach site office, built on the scenic Hat Khao Dacing foreshore in front of the
national park headquarters, is now totally derelict and,undermined by
erosion of the beach,is tipping over
and falling into the sea. The oil palms planted for ornamentaton (ugh!) are similarly now lying in the sea.
So that appears to be the end of that!
Riviera Beach site office at Hat
Khao Daeng in 1998
When developers encroached on the sceenic foreshore, which is a Malaysian Plover nesting
beach,in mid-1966,it was the wildlife conservation NGOs (specifically BCST,Seub Nakhasathien Foundation
and Wildlife Fund Thailand) who raised the alarm. The story was comendably given prominence by the
national press, and Royal Forest Department and Prachuap Khiri Hhan Province were forced to investigate.
RFD's mapping unit subsequently found that part of the development was indeed located inside the
national
park, and the other part on public land, and that therefore the
development was totally illegal.
However, there is scant cause for self-congratulation by any of those govemment agencics involved.
Legal action against the developers was never taken by RFD or Prachuap Provincial Administration, probably
because to do so would have revealed serious irregularities among their own
people(high-ranking civil servants,
including one former DG of Royal Forest development.) In the end, the single most significant obstacle to the
Riviera Beach development was the "Thaitanic" financial melt-down in July 1997 which swiftly put a damper on
land speculation as several financial institutions were bankrupted.
Malasian Plovers in breeding season at the beach of
Hat Khao Daeng.
A postscript: although Hat Khao Daeng is, at least for the time being, safe from desecration by development, all may not be well with the nesting population of Malaysian Plovers there. The same coastal erosion which has undermined Riviera Beach's site-office has also swept away much of the sandbar on which the Malaysian Plovers used to nest. The plovers are additionally being squeezed on the inland side by the proliferation of new prawn ponds on the previously little-developed coastal flats. So it remains unclear whether any, malaysian plovers and Little terms will be able to nest there in the current breeding season. Some monitoring of the Malaysian Plovers and nesting Little Terns during the 2001 nesting season is certainly needed.