In Thailand, resistance to eucalypt plantations peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The "Isan Khiau" or "Green Isan" - Green the Northeast (1987-1992) and the "Khor Jor Kor" (1990-1992) projects launched by an alliance of the pulp and paper industry, the Royal Forestry Department and the army aimed at "regreening" North-eastern Thailand by planting eucalypts. The second project was even more brutal than the first one: its plan included the eviction of five million residents as part of an effort to plant around 1.4 million hectares of eucalypts. Pye (2005: 109) notes that “the Khor Jor Kor Project represented a pinnacle of state-directed authoritarian forestry”. The former monk Phra Prachak Kuttjitto led villagers in the Buriram province in opposing eucalypt plantations. Among the tactics used was that of “ordaining” trees to prevent them from being cut down by wrapping tree trunks with strips of saffron of the golden color of a monk's robes. The region was a special target of repression under the Khor Jor Kor campaign. Villages were surrounded by troops, houses dismantled, leaders detained, and Phra Prachak Kuttjitto arrested. The project resulted in a broad-based rural protest movement that culminated in the biggest demonstration in Thai history, targeted at the military junta. After having ordered troops to fire into the crowds, the junta was finally forced to back down in 1992. In the following months, thousands of villagers continued to protest against the plantation project, blocking a major highway. As a result, the government scrapped the military’s eviction programme, suspended “reforestation” with eucalypts, and imposed a ceiling of 8 ha on any type of commercial tree plantation. In 1994, local opposition to a eucalypt-planting Royal Forest Department (RFD) development programme in Roi Et become so strong that district officials had no choice but to express support for villagers who chopped down over 300 ha of eucalypts in order to replace them with community-conserved forests of native species. By 1995, village networks in the province were attempting to eliminate eucalypts from their areas altogether, forcing the RFD to suspend its eucalypt operations over a wide area. Responsibility for existing plantations, meanwhile, was passed to other authorities, whom villagers have pressured through a variety of channels to cut the eucalypts and distribute the profits locally. Throughout their campaigns, north-eastern villagers and their NGO allies have: researched and publicized multi-purpose native alternatives to eucalypts which are responsive to the diversity of food, construction, medicinal and ecological needs of different localities; launched supplementary plantings of native trees on degraded sites; and posted new areas as community forest.