The Mae Fah Luang Foundation is expanding work from Doi Tung to community forests nationwide, building biodiversity databases and using tools such as bioacoustics, machine learning and eDNA to strengthen climate and conservation action.
As the world faces escalating climate change alongside accelerating biodiversity loss, many ecosystems risk reaching a point where they cannot recover fast enough. The crisis is sending a clear signal: protecting forests alone is not enough. Biodiversity is increasingly recognised as the foundation of water and food security, public health and long-term economic resilience.
The Mae Fah Luang Foundation under Royal Patronage is among the organisations working on biodiversity from sustained, on-the-ground experience. Through the Doi Tung Development Project in Chiang Rai, the foundation has worked with local communities for nearly four decades, guided by the late Princess Mother’s approach of “planting forests, planting people”, restoring more than 90% of forest cover.
Forest recovery, the foundation says, is not only about green space—it also means the return of life, including rare wildlife, local species and potentially organisms not yet recorded by science. Continuous research and ecosystem management have been used to ensure the restoration is accurate and sustainable. Doi Tung has therefore become not only a model for community development, but also an ecologically significant area at both national and regional levels.
Building on Doi Tung, the foundation has expanded into biodiversity data collection across community forests nationwide through a project focused on forest carbon credits for sustainable development, covering both terrestrial forests and mangroves. The aim is to create a data platform linking conservation, development and climate-change response.
2025 has marked a step into a new role for the foundation as an organisation working on biodiversity in a more systematic way, both nationally and internationally.
One key milestone has been its participation in implementing Thailand’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP 2023-2027) in collaboration with the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning and the Biodiversity-Based Economy Development Office. The work seeks to translate field lessons into policy—from expanding conservation areas and strengthening biodiversity databases, to developing biodiversity finance tools, building youth awareness and scaling efforts across community forests.
In the same year, the foundation worked with the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources, Chulalongkorn University, and Rajamangala University of Technology Srivijaya to survey biodiversity in Trang’s mangrove forests, where it has long partnered with communities and the private sector. The site is considered important for the global blue carbon agenda, and building a national-standard database reinforces the foundation’s role in linking fieldwork, academia, government agencies and local communities.