Phuket Environment | The Phuket News

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Protecting Phuket’s most valuable natural resource

Sunday 16 February 2025 03:00 PM

“It’s hard, dirty work. And sometimes shocking,” Michelle Mouillé says of cleaning up around the island. With over 95 kilometres of coastline, Phuket boasts some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. These beaches are a major draw for visitors and play a crucial role in the local economy through tourism.

Swan song from a giant

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 9 February 2025 02:00 PM

Friends, now within touching distance of my 90th milestone, I have taken the decision, after careful consideration, to stop writing for The Phuket News. Thanks are due to all of you out there who have taken the trouble to peruse my columns over the years, and especially to those readers who have actively shared their love of our magical natural world. Reaching out to a sympathetic audience has been a privilege, a learning process, and a journey that I have savoured every step of the way. I have made a lot of life-long friends.

Thoughts on water gardens

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 19 January 2025 02:00 PM

All Asians prize water in their gardens – from the humble pot in the front yard, with its mandatory water lily and darting swordtails, to the fibreglass fish pond, usually painted blue and with a row of pebbles embedded in its rim. If you are lucky, you may have a natural pond or ‘klong’ within the bounds of your property. Unarguably, water adds another dimension, both as an eye-catching feature, and because it allows the cultivation of plants that would otherwise be off-bounds.

Natural Phuket: Flutterby with butterflies

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 24 November 2024 02:00 PM

Once you get out of the concreted over towns, neon lights and traffic congestion and into the hills you get out of the humidity too and find quiet, and often nice cool breezes, not to mention good views. But best of all is the wildlife.

Green Thoughts: Rain, Rain... The ordeal by water

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 10 November 2024 02:00 PM

There are various ditties about rain. Those I remember from my childhood include: ‘Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day’, ‘The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain’ ‒ a line from Bernard Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’ ‒ and ‘When it rains, it pours’. The last quote is particularly apposite. Not that we need any reminding. The stuff has been remorseless this year. Phuket is on course to record one of its wettest years ever,

Green Thoughts: Branching out in your garden

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 3 November 2024 02:00 PM

From time to time I have remarked on the problems, nay perils, of cultivating trees in your tropical garden. The topic merits another look.

Natural beauty? Park it and see…

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 20 October 2024 02:00 PM

Here in Phuket we have so many beautiful natural sights on our doorstep and a bit further afield. This month I will be taking a break from Phuket itself as one of the best known national parks reopens for the high season.

Combating Greenwashing: Implications for Thailand and global business

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 13 October 2024 02:00 PM

In today’s market, sustainability is increasingly prioritised. Advertisements frequently highlight the environmental benefits of products, claiming “packaging made from 30% recycled plastic” or “carbon emissions reduced by 50% compared to 2020”. Yet, beneath these claims lies a challenge: how accurate are they? Instances such as T-shirts allegedly made from recycled plastic bottles ‒ where only 1% of the material is recycled ‒ raise concerns about greenwashing, the practice of overstating environmental efforts.

Green Thoughts: A trio of virtuous vines

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 6 October 2024 02:00 PM

Vines have to come up the hard way. In Thailand’s tropical, broad-leaved jungles, they start at the bottom, denizens of the understory, but fight their sinewy way to the forest canopy, where they can enjoy the sunlight. A key component of these verdant ecosystems, vines or more accurately, lianas, use trees as a means of vertical support, often employing tendrils or twining mechanisms to attach their woody stems to a reluctant host.

Natural Phuket: Mid-monsoon comes alive

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 22 September 2024 02:00 PM

As many people know, places in the tropics like Phuket are not always wall to wall sunshine. From May till November is really the monsoon season. This does not mean several months of hurricanes, storms and heavy rain. This is actually a great time for wildlife. Suddenly the island is green again and, like Spring in so many other places, bursts into life. The same happens here.

Green Thoughts: A postcard from Bluebell Wood

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 8 September 2024 02:00 PM

Worlds apart. Today I am, as they say, in the other side of the globe – roused from my jet-lagged slumber by the familiar sounds of a tropical garden ‒ the booming bassoon of the coucal, the angry scritch of a lone tokay gecko, the flutings of a magpie robin, the cooing of collared doves. Shafts of sunlight are lasering into my bedroom.

Natural Phuket: The best of ‘low season’

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 18 August 2024 02:00 PM

Many people come to Phuket all year round. Some for the first time while others have come multiple times. Many people who come this time of year for the first time are not sure what to expect. They see the photos of blue skies, crystal clear waters, then when they arrive they see wind, rain, grey skies and dark seas with large waves… and are at a loss what to think. Others prefer to come this time of year as it is cheaper and it is less crowded, but they still get plenty of sun, too. The key is knowing what to do and when to do it.

Perfumed Petal Power: A Whiter Shade of Pale

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 4 August 2024 02:00 PM

White has so many associations ‒ positively, it is associated with innocence and purity; on the distaff side, with coldness and sterility. In Thailand, the white lotus flower symbolises spiritual perfection for the Buddhist community, and judged by the presence of white in floral garlands, the colour is associated with both friendship and good fortune. Most lucky leis contain two or three white flowers – buds of jasmine and milkweed (calotropis) plus a pair of creamy magnolias for good measure.

Natural Phuket: Welcome to the ‘green season’

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 21 July 2024 02:00 PM

Many people all over the world picture places like Phuket as all year round idyllic tropical island paradises. Year-round sun, clear calm waters, blue lagoons teaming with fish and the odd turtle swimming by. Yes, this is a true description of Phuket ‒ with a bit of an imagination or if you believe the advertising photos ‒ for five to six months of the year. But the other six months you will see a totally different side to living in the tropics.

Green Thoughts: Enjoying deep purple in your garden

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 7 July 2024 02:00 PM

Everyone knows about aubergines. You know, those large glossy purple things that look for all the world as though they have been coated with clear varnish. Thailand, however, has many other varieties, all of them edible and all capable of being cultivated without fuss in your kitchen garden.

Natural Phuket: Green season’s hidden tiny wonders

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 23 June 2024 11:00 AM

After the heat at the end of high season comes the endless humidity and the need for 10 showers a day just to cool off. This is when Phuket’s wildlife comes alive. Suddenly all the plants and trees get a well-needed watering and spring to life. That again brings out all the small insects and in turn the birds and other creatures that feed on them.

Green Thoughts: Horses for courses

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 9 June 2024 02:30 PM

Horses for courses? As true of flowers as of fillies. When enthusiastic gardeners who have lived in Europe or North America set up home in Phuket, they must take on board the very different requirements that plants need in this tropical environment.

Natural Phuket: Early green season on the beach

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 19 May 2024 02:00 PM

After the crowds of high season have gone and the craziness of Songkran is a long gone memory, the island of Phuket enters what’s locally known as the ‘Green Season’. In most holiday destinations when it gets quieter it’s known as the ‘off-season’ or ‘low season’. Here it’s called the green season for a very good reason. The first rains have come and all the plants burst into life. The island becomes green again. It really is like the island is coming alive again.

Green Thoughts: A troupe of oddballs

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 5 May 2024 02:00 PM

Twice recently friends have excitedly described an encounter with a tree they had never seen before. An understandable response. After all, the cannonball [couroupita guianensis] in full flower is a truly spectacular sight. A denizen of dense jungles with large elliptical leaves up to twenty inches long shed twice a year,the tree has arrived in Thailand relatively recently from Central America.

Natural Phuket: Hidden wildlife in plain sight

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 28 April 2024 02:00 PM

Here in Phuket we have a few large birds of prey that are fairly common even in a busy place like Patong. I do mean the avian type with wings and feathers and not the nocturnal type as seen more commonly down Bangla Rd.

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