ORGANIZATION AND PROGRAM PLANNING FOR FOREST RESEARCH IN THAILAND

Abstract

I. BRIEF HISTORY Though the practice of forestry Thailand may he said to have originated as esrly as 1896, with the establishment of the Royal Forest Department, by order of King Chulalongkorn the Great or Rama V. forest research has made very slow progress even up to the present. In the early days, the Royal Forest Department was manned by a very small staff of British forest officers, loaned from the Forest Services of India and Burma and these officers were mostly occupied with routine duty of inspection, administration and looking after the national forests. So it was no small wonder that at that time, forest research should be relegated to the background. However, the need to learn more about the forests that were being administered and more particularly the species of timber trees that made up the components of such forests, kindled a keen desire in some of these forest officers to conduct botanical survey and research into the flora of the country, con-currentlu with their other suties.