"These people deserve an enormous amount of credit and respect for having understood the relationship between protection from storms and preserving their native forest habitat," he said.

"It is hard to say that (the Moken) weren't smarter than a lot of the people who claim to be more advanced... they understood they needed nature to protect them," he added.

Some 30 sea gypsy communities are scattered around the Andaman Sea, and many were previously considered squatters on government land.

However since the tsunami highlighted their plight, the Thai government has granted some of them the right to live on public land for five years.

Clinton was visiting Hin Look Dieu in his role as UN special envoy for tsunami recovery, and spent 30 minutes at the village of 195 sea gypsies. He was greeted by community leader Boon Chuy.

"I am excited that he is visiting the village," the 30-year-old fisherman told AFP before Clinton arrived.

"I will tell him what the UN has done to help us," he said, but he admitted that he had no idea who Bill Clinton was until a few days ago.

Boon said that most of the fishermen in Hin Look Dieu lost their boats and equipment in the tsunami, but the mangrove swap protected the village from the devastation wrought on other communities.

Ten houses were destroyed, he said, but no lives were lost, and the United Nations and local charities have provided them with new boats.

After accepting a ring of jasmine flowers, Clinton was whisked to a new community centre, where he was treated to a performance by eight girls in colourful outfits, who danced to the tune of a guitar and bongos.

As his short visit came to an end, Clinton planted a mangrove tree to launch an international drive to protest costal eco-systems in tsunami-affected areas.

The Mangroves for the Future initiative, run by the World Conservation Union (ICUN), aims to protect and rebuild coastal habitats in tsunami-affected countries.

"Mangroves are a sort of model eco-system... coastal populations traditionally use mangroves to collect firewood, to collect crab, to breed fish," ICUN spokeswoman Denise Jeanmonod told AFP.

Clinton warned that despite the successes, the tsunami recovery work was far from over.

"We have to keep working because on average only about 30 to 35 percent have been put back in permanent homes," he said, referring to all the tsunami-affected regions. "We have got to do better than that."

Clinton leaves later Saturday for Aceh, Indonesia, where he will visit temporary housing shelters and a school.

Agence France-Presse