Tiger's severed head seized during Thai zoo raid
05 December, 2020
Authorities found in Thailand found a severed tiger's head when they raided a good fake zoo near to the country's border with Laos which has suspected links to a great illegitimate wildlife trafficking racket.
Officials seized five live tigers at the Mukda Tiger Recreation area and Farm - which were sent to a wildlife sanctuary - even while other tiger parts were also discovered.
The website in the north-eastern province of Mukdahan had claimed six cubs were born at the facility five years back, but DNA tests have since confirmed the five seized tigers and the decapitated animal weren't related to any other folks at the park.
This has raised suspicions that the zoo had been used as a holding facility for wildlife being smuggled into Laos and Vietnam.
"They have had a good zoo licence to open as a business since 2012, nonetheless they claimed their facility was not prepared to open," the official from the Thai Section of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation told AFP.
"We got tipped faraway from various international agencies about the strange activities executed by this zoo."
The zoo's owner was not present through the raid on Monday (Nov 30) and was wanted for questioning, the state said.
The zoo had 28 tigers in 2013, and five years later the populace had jumped to 50, according to conservation group Wildlife Good friends Base Thailand. But by 2020 the quantity of tigers was right down to 25.
"Consider this as animal laundering; once you transformation the identities of the pets or animals they can no longer end up being traced," Edwin Wiek, the group's founder, told AFP.
"The benefit from these tigers if sold can be between $5,000-$6,600 per tiger."
"The Mukda (Tiger Recreation area and Farm) is actually a safe house where these tigers happen to be being parked there until they're sold with their Chinese customers in Laos."
Southeast Asia is an integral battleground in the struggle to save lots of the big cats, whose quantities globally have plummeted from about 100,000 a hundred years ago to fewer than 4,000 today.
High demand for tiger pelts and areas of the body in China and Vietnam fuels poaching. The body parts are being used in classic Chinese medicines.
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