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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: July-August 2007

Ex-Thai forest chief indicted for tiger sale

BANGKOK, BEIJING--The National Counter Corruption Commission of Thailand on August 10, 2007 unanimously indicted former Thai forest department chief Plodprasop Suraswadi for a variety of alleged criminal offenses in authorizing the 2002 export of 100 tigers from the Sri Racha Tiger Zoo in Chon Buri to the Sunya Zoo in Hainan, China.

"Under the [Thai] Wildlife Protection Act, exports of protected wildlife can be made government-to-government for research and conservation purposes," the Bangkok Post explained. "However, the NCCC found that the tiger export was commercial, because Sri Racha Tiger Zoo and Sunya Zoo are private entities."

Responded Plodprasop, "The tigers were not from the wild and not native to Thailand. The Sri Racha Tiger Zoo imported Bengal tigers and raised and bred them for 10 years."

While there are several generally recognized tiger subspecies, the international Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species gives them all Appendix I protection. The Thai Wildlife Protection Act is the national instrument for enforcing CITES.

Plodprasop's indictment was the latest of a series of summer 2007 rebukes to proponents of reopening international trade in tigers and tiger parts. In June 2007 the CITES triennial Conference of the Parties adopted a resolution stating that, "Tigers should not be bred for trade in their parts and derivatives."

"By some accounts, the market in tiger-driven medicine brought in more than $12 million a year before China banned the sale of tiger parts in 1993," reported Jonathan Adams of Newsweek. "Now some Chinese officials-under fierce lobbying from tiger farmers and would-be parts peddlers-want to regain that lost market. Legalizing the trade, they argue, could actually help protect wild tigers by reducing the incentive for illegal poaching."

Countered Wildlife Protection Society of India founder Belinda Wright, "In India you can poison a tiger for less than a dollar. "Raising one in captivity will cost $3,500 to $10,000."

The Wildlife Institute of India in early August reported that India now has only 1,300 to 1,500 tigers in the wild, down from 3,508 in 1997 and 4,334 in 1989.

"The four key tiger bearing states--Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan-- have only 417 tigers," wrote Kalyan Ray of the Deccan Herald. "The last census, carried out in 2001-02, showed a count of 1,233 in these four states."

Despite the decline, India is still believed to have more than half of all the wild tigers left in the world. China has fewer than 50.

China, however, has more than 5,000 captive-bred tigers, including more than 800 each at the Guilin Xiongsen Tigers & Bears Mountain Village and the Heilongjiang Siberian Tiger Park in Harbin. The former also has about 400 bears. Relative to their size, the animals "have about the same amount of space as a battery hen," reported Danny Penman of the Daily Mail in March 2007.

The Heilongjiang Siberian Tiger Park has reportedly frozen the remains of more than 100 dead tigers, in anticipation of sales opportunities if CITIES can be persuaded to downlist tigers.