Pgaz K'Nyau · Huay Hin Lad Nai

A community that wrote the rules of its own forest

People who understand the forest.

Overview

At Huay Hin Lad Nai, caring for the forest is woven into the community's social structure. This is more than a village beside the trees. The rules governing what can be gathered, what can be used and what must remain untouched are set by the people who live directly with their consequences.

01 — Rules

Rules the community enforces on itself

Here, the forest is the foundation that sustains everything else, rather than a resource waiting to be extracted. The community’s rules reach beyond limiting use today: they protect the possibility of drawing on the forest again next year.

Caring for these woods is therefore a condition of earning a living. Forest stewardship and livelihood are part of the same work.

02 — Rotation

Rotational farming, the thing most often misread from outside

From outside, rotational farming is often mistaken for forest clearance because only one moment in a longer cycle is considered. The fallow period lasts longer than cultivation. After a plot is farmed, it is left to recover, rather than permanently converted to another use.

That time for recovery marks the difference between a forest that can return and one that is lost for good.

03 — Firebreaks

Firebreaks that have to be cut again every year

Before each dry season, the community creates firebreaks around the forest. The entire task must be done afresh every year. There is no shortcut, and no one comes to do the work in their place.

Conservation finds its clearest expression here in physical labour, undertaken year after year, beyond any declaration of intent.

04 — History

What happened before this

Between 1986 and 1988, logging concessions and large-scale timber extraction affected this area. For the community, the loss extended beyond trees to the cultural relationship with the forest that had taken shape before the logging began.

Later, reserved-forest boundaries brought further difficulties and uncertainty over farming land. These experiences make the forest a matter of lived reality for the community.