One of the most popular daytrips offered by many tour offices on Lanta Island is a jungle trekking excursion to Khao Nor Chuchi Wildlife Sanctuary on the mainland. This area is not only famous for the province of Krabi, to which Lanta Island belongs, it is a very unique place for Thailand, as it encloses the last small patches of lowland rainforest. All other forests of Thailand are located in mountainous regions and therefore have no stratification in storeys and a different fauna and flora, which misses the rich biodiversity of the lowland forests. Even if you have seen some of Thailands national parks already, a visit to Khao Nor Chuchi Wildlife Sanctuary will show you a very different scenery with flowers and small wildlife you have not seen elsewhere.

Arriving at the site after a 1 hours drive from the mainland ferry pier passing through oilpalm and rubber plantations, seems not impressive at first sight. Some locals from the nearby Thung Tieo Village have set up wooden stalls at the entrance and sell BBQ chicken and refreshments. A few metres on, a small booth collects the entrance fee and is sometimes guarded by forest rangers, who should protect the park area after too many rare flowers disappeared from the site. But as soon as you have passed the entrance, the scenery changes significantly and only few sunlight is being filtered through the high trees giving the impression, that it is close to dusk already. A very clear water is coming down with subtle splashes from the right, flowing past roots and stones creating a water scenario of rare beauty.

While the old "Tina Jollife Trail", which had been set up more than 15 years ago, has been neglected during the last years and is now closed, a newly built nature trail was initiated by the Royal Forestry Department and branches to the right. It is almost completely consisting of stilt-built bridges and leads over open areas that are partly flooded by the crystal clear water born in the "Blue Pool" higher up on the slope of the mountain. But our destination is the "Crystal Pool" that is reached after a 30 minutes walk. The new nature trail is equipped with some signboards with explanations about the special features of this area, unfortunately some have disappeared already or have become illegibly, despite an entrance fee of 200 THB that is collected from foreign visitors since some years.

The water in this region is highly alkaline and inhibits most plant growth. Therefore the water flowing into the "Crystal Pool" is as clear as the name proposes. We have time here for swimming and a walk around the area that has been formed by the water and its ingredients, which have created sinter-like terraces.

The area around the 650 metre high Khao Nor mountain was declared the Khao Pra-Bang Khram Non-Hunting Area in 1987, following the re-discovery of the Gurney's Pitta, a colourful ground-living bird of the rain forest, that was not seen in the wild for more than 30 years and believed to be extinct. Prinz Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, who is a serious bird lover and close to the Royal Family of Thailand, might have played an influential role in this declaration. As most of the Gurney's Pitta lived outside the established Non-Hunting Area, in lowland forests protected as National Reserve Forest, the Royal Forestry Department put protected area staff in place with a headquarters and guard posts.

Since 1989 the Centre for Conservation Biology at Mahidol University in Bangkok is supporting the efforts to protect this unique biosphere with the Khao Nor Chuchi Lowland Forest Project. This project was financed exclusively by donations and provided infrastructure, training and provision of equipment. At this time, a nature trails network and an information centre was established and more than 200 000 seedlings of locally grown rain-forest trees were distributed to temples, schools and villages and used for reforestation in the region.

In 1993, the area was upgraded to the Khao Nor Chuchi Wildlife Sanctuary, but the most extensive and important area of lowland forest was excluded, because of the existence of a small and scattered rural human population in the area. For the following years, conservation efforts were supported by the Danish Ministry of Environment, the International Council for Bird Preservation, World Wildlife Found, Children's Rainforest Network and the GEO-initiative Projekt Tropischer Regenwald from Germany.

But despite the efforts of provincial and local government officials it was not possible to stem the process of forest clearance for rubber and oil palm. This continues to be the primary motivation for land-use change in all Southern Thailand, and has reduced the population of Gurney's Pitta in the Khao Nor Chuchi area from ca 21 pairs to 10-12 pairs during this period.

Improved roads to the site and the new wooden walkways, which have been added to the nature trails network, make the area around the "Crystal Lake" easier accessible to visitors, who arrive on daytrips from Krabi and Lanta Island during the dry season. Most operators bring their packed lunch with them, leaving the local population with little chance to earn a living from the increasing number of visitors. Local enterprises, which offered basic accommodation in Thung Tieo Village near the park headquarters closed down, as the income from the few overnight visitors was not sufficient to maintain the bungalows. As in many other locations around the globe, clearing the remaining forests for plantations, seems to be the only way for the locals to earn a living from the forest, unless tour operators and interested visitors are supporting local ventures and involve local people as guides so that they can make a living on the forest by protecting this value.