Wildlife in Thailand

Khao Yai National Park, Thailand’s first (1962), is the easiest place in the country to see big wildlife. Its evergreen forest and grassland hold wild elephants that often walk the main road at dawn and dusk, plus sambar deer, muntjac, gaur and the occasional bear. Great and wreathed hornbills cross the canopy with a sound like rushing wind, and white-handed and pileated gibbons both live here; the two species meet and even interbreed in the park. Khao Yai is the core of the Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai Forest Complex, a World Heritage Site since 2005 that runs east to the Cambodian border.

Base yourself in Pak Chong or the resorts outside the gate, and hire a park-licensed guide for a dawn walk and a night drive. Entry is 400 baht (about 12 USD). If an elephant approaches your car, stay inside, keep your distance and switch off the engine.

Kaeng Krachan National Park, Thailand’s largest, runs along the Myanmar border in Phetchaburi and is the country’s favourite birding destination: hornbills, broadbills, pittas and trogons along a single road into the hills, which closes in the rainy months. It became the centre of the Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex World Heritage Site in 2021, a listing contested because of disputes with the Karen communities who lived in the forest before the park.

Further north, Thungyai Naresuan and Huai Kha Khaeng form the heart of the Western Forest Complex, a natural World Heritage Site since 1991. They hold most of Thailand’s tigers, along with leopards, banteng, wild water buffalo and elephants, and visitor access is deliberately limited. Erawan and Sai Yok, near Kanchanaburi, are the easy face of the same forests.

Khao Sok National Park protects lowland rainforest among limestone towers, with Cheow Lan Lake at its centre, a reservoir created in the 1980s where floating raft houses let you wake to gibbons calling across the water. Khao Sok is one of the places to look for Rafflesia, a parasitic flower nearly a metre across that blooms for only a few days, and for hornbills and langurs; elephant and tiger tracks turn up only rarely. Go into the forest with a guide. Further south, Khao Luang near Nakhon Si Thammarat and Thale Noi in Phatthalung show the peninsula’s forest and wetland sides.

Doi Inthanon, at 2,565 m (8,415 ft) the highest mountain in Thailand, has cloud forest, sphagnum bog and mossy rhododendrons near its summit, with birds found nowhere else in the country. It is the north’s top birding site and an easy day from Chiang Mai. Doi Suthep-Pui National Park rises right above the city, and the limestone peak of Doi Chiang Dao is known for rare birds and limestone flora. In the northeast, the sandstone plateau of Phu Kradueng has pine forest and cliff-edge sunrises, while Nam Nao and Phu Hin Rong Kla protect more upland forest. Come from November to February, when migrant birds arrive from the north.

Bueng Boraphet in Nakhon Sawan, the largest freshwater lake of the central plains, fills with ducks, storks and jacanas in the cool season; it is also the only place the white-eyed river martin was ever recorded, a bird not seen since the 1980s. At Thale Noi you take a boat at dawn through lotus fields thick with herons, cormorants and purple swamphens. The salt pans of Pak Thale and Laem Phak Bia near Phetchaburi draw birders in winter for the critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper, and Khao Sam Roi Yot, south of Hua Hin, combines marshes with limestone hills.

The best reefs are on the Andaman coast. The Similan Islands, reached from Khao Lak, and Mu Ko Surin have granite boulders, clear water and coral gardens, with manta rays and whale sharks possible from February to April. Both close from mid-May to mid-October so the reefs can recover, and entry is 500 baht. Surin is also home to the Moken, a seafaring people whose village can be visited respectfully. Tarutao is a quiet archipelago near Malaysia, and Ao Phang Nga is best explored by sea kayak through hidden lagoons. On the Gulf side, Mu Ko Ang Thong near Ko Samui has 40-odd forested islands. Our diving guide covers the dive sites.

Off Trang, the seagrass around Ko Libong and Hat Chao Mai National Park supports Thailand’s largest dugong population, though seagrass loss in recent years has hit it hard. Sea turtles nest on Andaman beaches; respect closed beaches and nesting signs.

Roughly as many Thai elephants live in captivity as in the forests. When logging was banned in 1989, many working elephants and their mahouts moved into tourism, and elephants used for riding, painting or tricks are usually broken in by harsh training as calves and spend their lives chained between shows.

See them wild instead: at Khao Yai, or around Kui Buri south of Hua Hin, where rangers drive visitors in trucks to grasslands that wild herds visit in the late afternoon. If you visit captive elephants, choose an observation-only sanctuary where the animals graze, bathe and socialise and you watch from a distance. Elephant Nature Park near Chiang Mai, which takes in rescued elephants, is the best-known; a day visit costs about 2,500 baht including transfers. Be wary of camps that have renamed themselves “sanctuaries” but still sell crowded bathing sessions, riding or tricks.

Gibbons are apes, not monkeys: tailless, monogamous and famous for the duets mated pairs sing at dawn. Thailand has white-handed gibbons in most of its forests, pileated gibbons in the southeast and agile gibbons in the far south. The Gibbon Rehabilitation Project in Khao Phra Thaeo Wildlife Sanctuary on Phuket has spent decades returning rescued pets to the forest, and you can hear and sometimes see them from its visitor centre.

Long-tailed macaques are everywhere, and the monkeys of Lopburi have taken over parts of the old town; they bite and steal, so keep food out of sight. Look for shy dusky langurs in Khao Yai and Kaeng Krachan, and at night for the slow loris, a protected primate that should never be handled or used as a photo prop.

Thailand is one of the few countries where wild tiger numbers are rising. Camera-trap surveys put the population at about 180 to 220 in 2023, most of them around Huai Kha Khaeng, with smaller groups in Kaeng Krachan and the Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai forests, and the increase is credited to tougher anti-poaching patrols. Visitors almost never see one. Any place that lets you touch or photograph a tiger keeps captive animals; the notorious “Tiger Temple” in Kanchanaburi was raided and closed in 2016.

The cool, dry season from November to February is best for birding, hiking and spotting mammals, especially in the north, and migrants are in. March to May is hot, and smoke haze dims the northern mountains, though animals gather at waterholes. The rains from June to October bring leeches and muddy trails but lush forest. The Andaman marine parks open only from mid-October to mid-May.

Park entry for foreigners runs from 100 to 500 baht (about 3 to 15 USD). You can drive Khao Yai and Doi Inthanon yourself, but a local guide multiplies what you see: hire park-licensed guides at Khao Yai, book a specialist birding guide for Kaeng Krachan, and take a guided trek or lake trip in Khao Sok. Go at dawn, walk quietly and bring binoculars.