Police still suspect Bangkok slaughterhouse tiger meat came from zoo

BANGKOK TIGER TRACKER:

Thai officials still believe that the tiger meat found in a Bangkok exotic wildlife slaughterhouse came from a zoo, despite clearing two zoos in Chonburi of suspicion.

The National Parks, Wildlife, and Plant Conservation Department announced last week that the Million Years Stone Park and Pattaya Crocodile farm in Bang Lamung district and the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Si Racha district were no longer under investigation as they could account for all of their tigers.

When police found the 400kg of tiger meat in the house in Bangkok’s Khlong Sam Wa district one arrested suspect said the meat came from a zoo in Si Racha.

Saksit Simcharoen, chief of the Wildlife Department’s protected area administration, told the Bangkok Post that he doubted the tigers will killed in a national park, thus making a zoo more likely.

“It is difficult to transport the whole body of a tiger out from the deep forest because of its large size and heavy weight of hundreds of kilograms,” he said.

Kanita Ouitavon, the senior scientist at the department’s Wildlife Forensic Science Unit, said DNA testing would help determine whether the tigers were from a forest reserve or a zoo. The tests will take at least one month. Most of the tigers in zoos are Royal Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris), while the common species in the wilds of Thailand is the Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti).

“If [the recovered remains] are identified as Royal Bengal tiger we will know it has come from a zoo,” she said. “If not, it will be more complicated.”

Ms. Kanita also said that they are examining the contents of the tiger’s stomachs. If they find chicken bones, they most likely came from a zoo.

But determining which zoo they came from will be difficult as there is no DNA database.

According to the department records, there are 888 tigers in 21 farms and zoos around the country.

—

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.

[[{“type”:”media”,”view_mode”:”media_large”,”fid”:null,”attributes”:{“class”:”media-image”,”typeof”:”foaf:Image”,”style”:””,”alt”:””}}]]

Photo: Thai Nature Crime Police