- Banteng, a species of wild cattle, have suffered an 80% population decline across their range in recent decades. But in Thailand, populations are rebounding strongly in well-protected areas.
- Decades of strict habitat protection and ranger patrols have reduced poaching and recovered numbers to such an extent that several herds have spread outside of protected sites into surrounding buffer areas, where enforcement of wildlife laws is limited.
- In an effort to protect the growing herds, villagers living in the buffer area of Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, who once experienced conflict with the banteng, have set up a community-led ecotourism initiative based on banteng-watching.
- The wildlife tours are creating powerful cultural, social and financial deterrents to poaching, and the banteng are proving to be a key species around which to rally local support for conservation.
HUAI KHA KHAENG, Thailand — “Five years ago, we’d never have been able to see this,” says Boonlert Tianchang, raising a pair of binoculars to his beaming eyes. “To see just one banteng, we would have had to go deep into the forest. Now, they’re right here.”
We’re standing on a wildlife-viewing platform overlooking a roughly 8-hectare (20-acre) grassland in the buffer area surrounding the northeastern boundary of Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, a flagship protected area in Thailand’s Uthai Thani province.
Russet-colored banteng (Bos javanicus), one of the world’s rarest species of wild cattle, step one by one into the clearing from the cover of the forest. Mothers, calves and adult males browse the vegetation nonchalantly, their stocky bright-orange bodies contrasting almost comically with their spindly white legs and snowy rumps.
“This is the only place in Thailand where you can see a lot of banteng like this,” says Boonlert, who lives in the buffer area and leads a community-based ecotourism initiative focused on tours to see this increasingly common sight.
“I see them here so often,” he says. “But every time, I’m humbled thinking of all the work that’s gone into protecting them [to] get to this point.”
Protection prompts recovery
As large herbivores, banteng play a vital role in dispersing seeds and cycling nutrients in the dry, open-canopy forests that are their preferred habitat. Their browsing of understory vegetation also likely helps reduce fuel load and suppress the spread of flames across fire-prone landscapes.
They’re also prime prey for Indochinese tigers (Panthera tigris corbetti), as well as leopards (Panthera pardus) and dholes (Cuon alpinus), which hunt juveniles, making them a key component of healthy and complete forest food webs.
However, like many of the world’s 12 species of wild cattle, banteng have disappeared from much of their historical range. Decades of deforestation, agricultural expansion, and hunting for their meat, horns and hides decimated their numbers. Globally, the latest IUCN Red List assessment puts their worldwide population at no more than 4,900 individuals. And in 2024, their conservation status worsened from endangered to critically endangered, with experts citing their precipitous population declines in previous strongholds like Cambodia and Malaysian Borneo.
In Thailand, banteng numbers ebbed as low as a few hundred individuals at the turn of the century, but they’re now showing steady signs of recovery in well-protected areas.
Transect surveys reported in 2024 showed a doubling of the banteng population living in Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary over the past two decades, with an estimated population of at least 1,400 individuals, earning it recognition as home to the largest population of banteng in Southeast Asia.
That makes the herds living in and around Huai Kha Khaeng crucial for wider programs that aim to reestablish populations in other protected areas where they’ve been lost.
A change in conservation tactics
The banteng recovery is widely credited to the success of high-quality ranger patrols that follow the SMART (Spatial Monitoring And Reporting Tool) wildlife monitoring and antipoaching approach, alongside efforts to restore key habitats and water sources.
Introduced in Huai Kha Khaeng in 2006 and consistently practiced ever since, the SMART patrol program enabled an intelligence-driven approach to protected area management — a significant shift away from previous heavy-handed military approaches that proved to have limited impact.
Conflicts between local communities and conservation authorities were rife prior to the new measures, according to Anak Pattanavibool, an emeritus lecturer at Kasetsart University who was involved in the establishment of the SMART program during his former role with the Thailand office of the Wildlife Conservation Society. Ranger teams more often came across dead animals than live ones, he says. “In the 1990s, you could walk all night and see only animal carcasses.”
The SMART program tackles poaching, logging and conflicts through consistent data collection by ranger teams on antipoaching foot patrols. Spatial information on wildlife field signs, habitat quality and human-related threats directly informs law enforcement and conservation strategies.
Reduced poaching pressure and habitat protection since the patrols began has also helped revive Huai Kha Khaeng’s tiger population, as well as several of their other prey species, including sambar (Rusa unicolor) and muntjac (Muntiacus muntjak) deer.
Huai Kha Khaeng is now the flagship site of the SMART approach, which has been scaled up across 237 protected areas in Thailand and is implemented by more than 10,000 patrol staff. Patrols here are managed through agreements between WCS, the Thai Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP), and Kasetsart University’s Faculty of Forestry.
Out of reserves, into conflict
Finally able to breed without hunting pressure, the bovines have recovered to such an extent in Huai Kha Khaeng that several herds have naturally dispersed into grassy habitats in the buffer areas. These areas are used by local communities for grazing livestock and small-scale farming, prompting concerns among wildlife authorities over the potential for human-banteng conflict.
According to Boonlert, conflicts have indeed arisen. Smallholders occasionally see their cash crops trampled by banteng, he says. And while poaching in the buffer area around the reserve isn’t as intense as in the past, there’s still the ever-present risk of poachers targeting banteng, given the limited enforcement of wildlife laws outside of protected areas.
Moreover, in 2020, hundreds of livestock farmers were asked to remove their domestic cattle from areas used by banteng, to minimize the risk of disease transmission. Since then, authorities have rezoned parts of the buffer area to clarify community use, wildlife priorities, and government agency jurisdictions. The Huai Thap Salao–Huai Kok Khwai Non-Hunting Area was designated in February 2023 under the management of the DNP; and the Huai Thap Salao Recreational Forest, designated in June 2025, is under the responsibility of the Royal Forest Department.
While each livestock farmer received a payment of 500 baht (about $15) per livestock animal removed from the banteng areas, and a subdistrict fund exists to compensate farmers who have lost crops to wildlife damage, it was viewed as insufficient to fully offset the costs to local livelihoods.
Crucially, local residents said they didn’t see the benefits from recovering wildlife populations. “All they could see were restrictions on their farmland and where they could graze livestock,” says Sangsan Phumsathan, an associate professor at Kasetsart University, who led several government-funded feasibility studies to reduce human-wildlife conflict in the buffer areas.
It was clear something needed to be done to build the economy in a way that would allow people and banteng to coexist. The most promising avenue lay in ecotourism, with banteng-watching at its heart.
With support from government agencies, academics and local officials, residents of Rabam subdistrict, one of the communities most affected by the presence of banteng, set up the Rabam community-based wildlife tourism enterprise in 2021.
Community-based tourism
At first, it was difficult to get villagers on board, Boonlert says: Residents were skeptical that banteng could draw visitors to the area. While the species has an endearingly peaceful disposition and adult males can grow to an impressive 800 kilograms (nearly 1,800 pounds), they’re an unlikely figurehead for wildlife tourism in Thailand — a country more often associated with obviously charismatic species like tigers, elephants and hornbills.
Boonlert and his fellow founders were buoyed, however, by the success of wild cattle-watching projects elsewhere in Thailand. Gaur (Bos gaurus), another of the five species of wild cattle found in Thailand, have become an icon of community-based ecotourism in the buffer area of Kui Buri National Park, alongside elephants. Villagers from Rabam traveled to Kui Buri to learn how to operate wildlife tours as part of a UNDP-funded research project; since then, membership of the initiative increased.
Provincial development plans that promote Uthai Thani as an ecotourism destination also helped banteng become a sought-after sighting for visitors, who also come to the area to view wildlife such as Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), wild boars (Sus scrofa), green peafowl (Pavo muticus), sambar, muntjac and Eld’s deer (Rucervus eldii), as well as a variety of resident waterfowl.
Today, more than 320 residents of 19 villages participate in the tourism group, operating a variety of environmental and cultural activities ranging from nature trails, wildlife watching and boat tours, to weaving, tie-dying and permaculture gardening. Tourist numbers have grown over the years, from tens per month to thousands, Boonlert says. What began as a supplementary income source has now grown to become participants’ primary livelihood.
The enterprise is managed through a rotational system so that no one is left out, and 5% of revenues are reinvested back into a community fund that contributes to local infrastructure projects like roads, health care and schools. All members also abide by mutually agreed-upon rules, such as refraining from hunting or consuming wild animals, or harvesting plants and mushrooms in protected forest areas. So far, Boonlert says, residents have abided by the rules, which he credits to the social and moral responsibility that people feel as part of the program.
“All the members of the tourism program understand the benefits of having the banteng around,” Boonlert says. “By earning an income from the visitors, they’re learning to love [the banteng] and want to protect them. They won’t allow them to come to harm.”
The ecotourism group also supports local conservation efforts by donating food to a local wildlife center operated by the DNP that breeds several deer species. National recognition arrived in 2025, when the project received an Outstanding Community-Based Natural Resource Management Network Award from the Thai Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.
Local support for conservation
Although it took several years of patience, Supaporn Kulkhot says she now derives most of her income from tourism. Now a wildlife guide leading boat tours on Tab Salao reservoir, she used to raise livestock and fish to support her family of six. Erratic catch sizes and livestock restrictions motivated her to look to tourism as an alternative livelihood.
Supaporn says her relationship with nature has shifted as a result of her new work. “In the past, I would look at wildlife as a type of food,” she says. “But now my understanding of wildlife has changed. Instead, I look at the animals as they are. I feel we have a responsibility to preserve them, as they can be an everlasting source of income.”
This shift is happening even among villagers not directly involved in tourism, Supaporn adds. Locals are growing more curious about wildlife. “Fisherfolk keep telling me where they’ve seen elephants or banteng,” she says.
Boonlert agrees tourism has played an important role in building local support for conservation. “Gradually, the tourism has built a sense of ownership among the villagers, and they feel the forest is an asset they want to protect,” he says. “When they have the feeling the forest is theirs, they don’t want to harm it. This is the foundation of sustainable ecotourism.”
However, Boonlert is also under no illusions that ecotourism in and of itself is a silver bullet for conservation. Tourism must be carefully managed to ensure the economic, social and cultural benefits are felt locally and consequently cultivate local motivation to protect wildlife, he says.
“It’s very important that the tourism is operated by the community members who are part of this project, because they themselves experience the benefits of having the wildlife nearby, and so are motivated to protect it,” Boonlert says.
This means ensuring that community members have meaningful involvement in operating and managing the tourism venture, he says, and are empowered to make decisions on how the initiative develops. This would ensure the project doesn’t fall into the trap of overdevelopment that could see tourism revenues siphoned off into more centralized pockets.
“Tourism operated by the community, at a sustainable scale, can maintain the balance between people and nature, without overexploiting it,” he says.
Robert Steinmetz, head of conservation biology at WWF-Thailand, says coexistence doesn’t always have to be about money. He says camera traps in another part of the Huai Kha Khaeng buffer area have recorded a breeding population of 28 banteng living in a community forest used intensively by people.
Noting that the discovery “dashes to pieces” assumptions about wildlife needing undisturbed areas, Steinmetz says it comes down to people accepting the wild cattle’s innate right to be there. “People told me that in the days of their grandfathers, the banteng were there; then they were gone for a long time; and now that they’re back, they accept it,” he says.
A satisfying sight
For now, ecotourism is proving an effective way of shifting the narrative in Rabam’s buffer area from conflict toward harmony.
As the golden evening light wanes, the forested mountains of the wildlife sanctuary are thrown into silhouette and the herd of banteng, although surely aware of our presence, graze on unperturbed.
Boonlert likens the reserve to a precious jewel. “Our goal was to find a way for this diamond to improve the lives of the humble villagers living here who help to protect it,” he says.
A green peafowl screeches into the hush of dusk as it lowers its showy tail feathers, and a family of wild boars scurries chaotically through the tall grass — reminders that safeguarding the banteng’s habitat has countless benefits for other species too.
The final shards of daylight pick out the banteng, blazing vivid red against the tawny grass, faded by the ongoing dry season.
“It’s not boring to watch these banteng,” Boonlert says. “Wildlife is the product of our work to conserve the forest, so this is a moment filled with pride and happiness.”
Banner image: Banteng photographed in the Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, Thailand. Image by Rushen via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).
Carolyn Cowan is a staff writer for Mongabay.
Citations:
Simcharoen, A., Simcharoen, S., Duangchantrasiri, S., Bump, J., & Smith, J. L. (2018). Tiger and leopard diets in western Thailand: Evidence for overlap and potential consequences. Food Webs, 15, e00085. doi:10.1016/j.fooweb.2018.e00085
Duangchantrasiri, S., Sornsa, M., Jathanna, D., Jornburom, P., Pattanavibool, A., Simcharoen, S., … Karanth, K. U. (2024). Rigorous assessment of a unique tiger recovery in Southeast Asia based on photographic capture-recapture modeling of population dynamics. Global Ecology and Conservation, 53, e03016. doi:10.1016/j.gecco.2024.e03016
Saisamorn, A., Duangchantrasiri, S., Sornsa, M., Suksavate, W., Pattanavibool, A., & Duengkae, P. (2024). Recovery of globally threatened ungulate species in Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, Thailand. Global Ecology and Conservation, 53, e03012. doi:10.1016/j.gecco.2024.e03012
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