Thai PM visits NZ forest management

AUCKLAND, March 23 (TNA) - Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on Saturday visited New Zealand’s Arataki Visitor Centre and inspected forest management and trees fertility. Her inspection was made around the Beveridge Track, an area designed to allowing youths to make an environment study as well as to give importance to stay with the nature. Yingluck said the natural conservation area would give people and tourists visiting it to help conserve nature as well as providing opportunity for youths to study and learn how to live with the nature and simultaneously force wood and paper manufacturers to grow trees replacing those which have been cut. Forest encroachment in Thailand must be solved at both short and long-term levels, she said. On short-term solution, concerned agencies must find ways preventing people from encroaching the forests while development must be made on forests whose trees have been illegally cut so that they could become futile again, Yingluck said. The prime minister is on four-day official visits to New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, started Friday. (TNA)