Did tiger meat at wildlife slaughterhouse come from Chonburi zoo?

BANGKOK TIGER TRACKER:

Bangkok police suspect a local zoo of supplying tiger carcasses to the exotic wildlife slaughterhouse in the Min Buri district that was raided Saturday Feb. 4.

Pol Col Kiattipong Khawsamang, deputy commander of the Natural Resources and Environmental Crime Suppression Division, said that police believe that the 400kg of meat from two male tiger carcasses found in the house came from a tiger zoo in Chonburi’s Si Racha district. They have not obtained evidence though,The Bangkok Post reported.

“We are waiting to interrogate the owner of the tiger meat,” Pol Col Kiattipong said. “We will collect all necessary information, including the phone numbers of his contacts.”

He said that the suspected owner of the tiger meat, Tananuwat Boonperm aka Od Bang Kroui, kept records related to the illegal trade in wildlife.

The tiger zoo in Si Racha was linked to a previous case when 11 tiger carcasses were found in Nakhon Phanom in 2008, but investigators did not prosecute the zoo because of insufficient evidence.

The tiger zoo in Si Racha is the main suspected source of the meat, but Pol Col Kiattipong said that police are also looking into a zoo in Suphan Buri.

When police raided the slaughterhouse, they found carcasses of zebras, an elephant, crocodiles, and wild buffalo, in addition to the tiger meat. They arrested seven men, some who fingered Mr Tananuwat as the owner of the meat.

—

Bangkok Tiger Tracker is Coconuts Bangkok’s regular round up of tiger-related news from Thailand and around the continent. Asia’s biggest cat is one of the most ecologically and culturally important animals in the world, but is facing extinction due to poaching and loss of habitat. It is estimated that there are only about 3,200 tigers remaining in the wild today in Asia, down from nearly 100,000 a century ago.