Monks accused of wildlife crimes
Thai police have charged 22 people, including three Buddhist monks, with wildlife trafficking and have removed more dead animals, including a bear and a leopard, from the infamous Tiger Temple.
The temple in Kanchanaburi province, west of the capital, Bangkok, has been a major tourist attraction for more than two decades, with visitors paying 600 baht (NZ$25) admission to pose for photographs with the tigers.
Wildlife activists have accused the temple of illegally breeding the animals, while some visitors on online forums have complained that the tigers appeared to be sedated. The temple denies the accusations.
Adisorn Nuchdamrong, from Thailand’s Department of National Parks, said 22 people had been charged with wildlife possession and trafficking.
They included 17 members of the temple’s foundation, and three monks who were allegedly caught trying to flee with a truckload of tiger skins, he said.
The charges follow the grim discovery on Thursday of the bodies of 40 tiger cubs inside a freezer. It remains unclear why the dead cubs were being stored, though tiger bones and body parts are used in traditional Chinese medicine.
‘‘We’ve confiscated all the hard discs of closed-circuit cameras in this temple for police to find evidence of wrongdoing,’’ Adisorn said.
The temple officially opened in 1994 close to a wild tiger habitat. It received its first tiger cub, which had been found by villagers, in 1999. The cub died soon afterwards but villagers kept bringing cubs to the temple, usually when the mothers had been killed by poachers, the temple said.
Repeated efforts to shut down the temple have been blocked by the monks. In 2005 it was cleared of allegations of animal mistreatment after a raid by soldiers and an investigation by wildlife officials.
Thailand is a well-known trafficking hub of illicit wildlife products, including ivory.
Thailand’s wildlife department began raiding the temple on Tuesday. There were 137 tigers inside the temple, and 119 have been removed.
The World Wildlife Fund said in April that the number of wild tigers in the world stands at around 3890, with more than 100 of them in Thailand.