Nui Beach Returns: Phuket Authorities Reclaim a Protected Shore

On the morning of 19 June 2026, a team of forest officers, district officials, and police walked the steep track to Nui Beach on Phuket's southwestern coast and posted a formal demolition notice on the site — a document that eight years of legal effort had been building toward [ref:1].

The notice, issued under Section 25 of the National Reserved Forest Act and signed by Nikorn Sirarojananon, Director-General of the Royal Forest Department, gives operators of 39 structures until 9 July to remove them from the protected land. Sampan Meesit, Director of the Phuket Forest Center, led the joint team alongside Senior Forestry Officer Thanandorn Phetdee, Thitichai Siamlek, Deputy District Chief of Mueang Phuket, and Pol. Lt. Col. Wiwat Chamnankit of Karon Police. The structures — spread across more than 15 rai of National Reserved Forest — include remnants from earlier removals, fencing that blocked public access to the waterline, and a group of 36 buildings formally documented during a 2024 inspection [ref:1].

Nui Beach sits in a fold of Phuket's southwestern coastline, a small cove bracketed by forested limestone hills south of Kata Noi and above the windswept cape at Laem Phromthep. The bay is small enough that the sea feels enclosed — more lagoon than open water — and in the green season, when the hillsides pull the full weight of the southwest monsoon and deepen to dark jade, the water below them runs clear to the sand. Swimming here on a midweek June morning, with the trees dripping and the beach quiet, does not require superlatives. People who know Nui Beach do not tend to broadcast it. They tell one friend, and that friend tells another, and the knowledge moves the way local knowledge moves: sideways through families, not up onto billboards.

The land's protected status has always been on paper. The Royal Forest Department classified this stretch of coast as National Reserved Forest before any structure was built on it. What took years to arrive was enforcement. Authorities first inspected the site in July 2018. Two criminal convictions followed, argued under the Forest Act of 1941, the National Reserved Forest Act of 1964, the Land Code, and the Environmental Quality Act of 1992 [ref:2]. Despite those convictions, occupation continued. An entrance fee with no legal basis was collected at a gate that had no right to exist. Families who had swum and fished at Nui Beach since childhood arrived to find themselves turned away or asked to pay to enter public land.

In May 2026, Natural Resources and Environment Minister Suchart Chomklin and Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul both visited Nui Beach after community members raised the issue formally at the provincial level [ref:2]. Their visit brought momentum. The joint enforcement team that arrived on 19 June — representing forest, district, and police, arriving together rather than separately — carries the weight of that attention.

For the small vendors and food sellers who work the road down to the beach, the notice means the chance to operate without needing to answer to whoever controlled the gate. For local families, swimmers, and the fishers who know the rocks at the southern end of the cove, it means a beach that does not charge admission to its own shore. For the forested hillsides and the tideline beneath them, it means the continuation of a protection that was granted before any of the encroaching structures were built.

The 9 July deadline is a hard edge, but the work does not end there. Removing 39 structures from steep, forested coastal land is a methodical process. The community near Nui Beach has seen enough earlier cycles — inspections, warnings, delays — to understand that a posted notice is a beginning. What makes this one feel different is the composition of the team behind it: a joint mandate that arrived at the beach at the same hour, signed the same document, and left the same notice on the same post.

The green season quiets Phuket's southern roads. Fewer boats pass offshore; the hillsides hold their colour for weeks without drying out; the beaches south of Kata Noi grow still. In that seasonal stillness, a cove like Nui Beach becomes itself again — less a destination than a part of the coast that belongs to the people who live beside it. The notice posted on 19 June is a step toward keeping it that way.