Thai Smugglers Busted with Grisly Halves of Tiger Carcasses
The Thai Navy arrested eight animal traffickers in possession of two tiger carcasses, both chopped in half, and 45 pangolins as they attempted to smuggle the animals across the Mekong River into Lao PDF.
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“The trail of butchered Tigers winds through many countries in Southeast Asia.” - Chris R. Shepherd, TRAFFIC Southeast Asia’s Acting Director
Officers in the Thai Navy followed two cars with the grisly cargo and arrested eight people as they attempted to transfer the animals from cars into a boat for the river crossing. Two of the pangolins were already dead.
The Thai Natural Resources and Environmental Crime Suppression Division sent the tiger carcasses to the Dept. of National Parks for DNA testing to determine if they were domesticated or wild animals.
“TRAFFIC lauds the Thai authorities for carrying out these DNA tests. Determining the origin of these Tigers is crucial if authorities hope to end this tragic trade.”- Shepherd
Previous attempts to smuggle tigers across the border have been recorded, with the Thai Navy preventing smugglers from bringing six slaughtered tigers, five leopards and 275 live pangolins across the Thai-Laos border in January 2008. The tigers in that incident were also sliced in half, and the leopards were missing their organs.
In January 2009, police in Thailand seized the carcasses of four tigers in Hua Hin, all decapitated. Police believed those tigers came from Malaysia and were en route to China. In February, two tiger carcasses and a panther carcass were seized in the province of Pattani.
TRAFFIC encouraged governments in Southeastern Asian countries to work together to stem the flow of illegal animal trafficking across borders.
“Tracking down those who illegally kill and trade these Tigers and putting them behind bars is a task countries cannot accomplish their own.” - Shepherd
Images: Mekong Waterfront Guard & Natural Resources and Environmental Crime Suppression Division (NRECD) Thailand
[Via WWF]
What exactly are the smugglers using these carcasses for?
Wow, just when you think you’ve seen the lowest of the low. I would think that an appropriate punishment for these little poachers would be to put them behind bars — with a couple of healthy, hungry tigers. Then let’s see how many pieces THEY get cut into.
very depressing on so many levels…..
This is an extremely terrible situation.
Jeremy Cushing
Disrespectful.
“i am so sick of being a member of this sickening spieces!”
Well, there’s an easy way to change that…
one of the tigers appears to have been pregnant during her death (check the second picture down lower right hand side of it) that made me puke a little bit in my mouth.
then again, destroying their habitat with intrusive human behaviour and standards of living can’t be helping them either.
I didn’t know pangolins were so popular on the black market.
dirty bastards
I’d support the death penalty for endangered wildlife smugglers, but that won’t stop the black market and it’ll just make them desperate. Take a look at poachers in Kenya: they’d show the Bloods and the Crips a thing or three about shooting cops.
However, Kenya’s game wardens are no slouches either. They know they’re literally hunting dangerous game (poachers) so they’re packing military-style heat and equipment, too. Are tigers worth going to war over? Given that there’s only 2,000 in the wild, I’d say so.
It’s inexcusable that with our knowledge and the rule of law, we stand by and do nothing while this magnificent animal goes extinct so some knuckle-dragger in China can get a hard-on.
Come on, China! Get off your ancient, corrupt asses and enforce the ban!
Come on, Thailand! Drop the other shoe and give your enforcers license to kill!