BANGKOK, March 14 (Xinhua) -- Thailand's Northernmost Chiang Rai province was declared a disaster zone on Wednesday morning as embattled provincial and other agencies confronted out-of-control brush and forest fires that have left smog and smoke hanging over northern Thailand, according to a local media.

    Traditionally, before the rains and at the end of the hot, dry season, local farmers in the mountains burn off the preceding season's accumulation of vegetation to provide nutrients for the soil.

    This year, however, the region has been especially dry, and vulnerable, to having such fires spread out of control, the state-run Thai News Agency said.

    Together with burn-off fires moving east and south from neighboring Myanmar's Shan State, Thailand is besieged with conflagrations and smoke accumulation over a wide area of the region, and is on the edge of declaring an emergency zone in the northern provinces due to spreading clouds of choking smoke, clogged with dust and micro-particles of partially-burned wood, leaves and other vegetation fed by raging brushfires and forest fires.

    Government spokesman Yongyuth Mayalarp announced Tuesday that the National Environment Preservation Act of 1992 might be implemented to cope with current widespread air pollution from brushfires and the burning of seasonal ground cover in the forests to the extent that part or all of the 17 northern provinces may be declared an emergency or hazardous zone.

    The Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation is recruiting personnel to promptly extinguish forest blazes in those northern areas, and that special clinics may be set up on location to care for persons having illnesses related to the acrid forest smoke, the government spokesman said.

    The authorities, including officials of the Public Health Ministry, the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry, the Interior Ministry and the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, were prohibiting local villagers in the region -- especially poachers --from attempting to clear weeds and undergrowth, as well as forests, by setting them on fire.