Thai police charge 22 with wildlife trafficking at tiger temple attraction
Thai police have charged 22 people, including three Buddhist monks, with wildlife trafficking and removed more dead animals including a bear and a leopard from the infamous Tiger Temple, authorities said on Friday.
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 (US$17) admission to pose for photographs with the tigers.
We’ve confiscated all the hard discs of closed circuit cameras in this temple for police to find evidence of wrongdoing
Wildlife activists have accused the temple of illegally breeding the tigers while some visitors on online forums complained that the tigers appeared 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, including 17 members of the temple’s foundation and three monks trying to flee with a truckload of tiger skins.
It followed the grim discovery on Wednesday of the bodies of 40 tigers cubs inside a freezer.
It’s still unclear why the dead tiger cubs were being kept, though tiger bones and body parts are used in traditional Chinese medicine.