Sanam Bin Reservoir (Sanam Bin Non-Hunting Area) is a man-made inland wetland in Prakhon Chai District, Buri Ram Province, located on the floodplain of the Mun River, a tributary of the Mekong. The reservoir was created in the 1970s by damming a natural marshy area and is surrounded by extensive marshy grassland, with parts of the shoreline fringed by emergent vegetation. The wetland is under public ownership and was declared a Non-Hunting Area in 1980, with an area station established at the site.

Sanam Bin is a key site for the reintroduction programme for the globally threatened eastern population of Sarus Crane, alongside Huai Chorakhe Mak and Huai Talad Non-Hunting Areas, with the reintroduced crane population now exceeding 150 individuals across the three sites. The wetland also supports wintering congregations of storks, ducks, and shorebirds, and provides essential ecosystem services for surrounding communities, including freshwater supply, food provision, and flood hazard regulation. However, pressures from tourism and settlement expansion, encroachment, disturbance and illegal hunting, invasive species (including water hyacinth and giant mimosa), and agrochemical inflows from surrounding rice cultivation threaten the site’s ecological integrity. Strengthening site-based management and legal protection, sustaining crane monitoring and awareness, improving invasive species management, enhancing ecotourism management, and scaling up biodiversity-friendly rice production and agrochemical waste management offer key opportunities to reinforce stewardship while safeguarding the wetland’s ecosystem services.

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