Thailand suspends search for mushroom forager missing in Thap Lan park

Thailand suspended a 15-day search for Pramote Khensanthia after the 45-year-old mushroom forager vanished in Thap Lan National Park, a vast forest where one wrong turn can turn a familiar patch into a rescue operation. Pramote, from Ban Khok Khaeun Phatthana village in Kham Thale So district, disappeared on May 31 while collecting wild mushrooms and forest products with his wife and neighbors near Chong Khao Khaep in the Wang Nam Khiao area.

The search grew quickly into a multi-agency push. District officials, soldiers from the 21st Military Circle, Thap Lan National Park staff, police, Hook 31 rescue volunteers, emergency responders, village leaders and local residents all joined the effort. Teams brought in K9 tracking dogs, ground patrols, motorcycles for remote access and thermal-imaging drones, but by June 14 the district chief, acting as incident commander, called a review meeting at the forward operations center and ordered the active search suspended.

Officials said the terrain worked against them at every turn. Dense vegetation, steep slopes and frequent rainfall made movement slow and visibility poor, while some areas near Khao Saladai were still considered dangerous because of wild elephants, gaur and other predators. Before the suspension, local reporting said the early search had involved roughly 40 to 50 personnel, a sign of how quickly a routine foraging trip had escalated into a time-sensitive operation.

Thap Lan’s scale helps explain the challenge. The park spans Prachinburi and Nakhon Ratchasima provinces and covers about 2,236 square kilometers. It was established in 1981, and its size, broken forest and wildlife corridors have long made field response difficult once someone is off trail or fails to return by dark.

The missing-man case also sits inside a broader safety picture around Thap Lan. Park authorities kept the Khao Salak Dai viewpoint closed after sightings of elephants and tigers foraging in nearby farmers’ fields, and on May 11 park officials and local partners opened a wild-elephant and wildlife surveillance center in Khon Buri district to improve safety and reduce losses from animals leaving protected areas. In early June, authorities were also coordinating to drive a lost wild elephant back toward the park.

For mushroom collectors, the lesson is sharp. Set a hard turnaround time, leave a precise route with someone who will act on it, and treat daylight, rain and wildlife as part of the plan, not background noise. In Thap Lan, a familiar forage became a missing-person case fast, and the forest showed how quickly that can happen.