4 suspects in wildlife trade arrested across Thailand

Environmental police arrested 4 suspected wildlife traders today in several provinces across Thailand. The Nonthaburi Provincial Court ordered arrest warrants for the group on June 14 on charges of colluding in illegal trading in wildlife and illegal possession of protected wild animals.

Officers from Thailand’s Natural Resources and Environmental Crime Suppression searched spots in Bangkok, Pathum Thani, Nonthaburi, Ayutthaya, and Suphan Buri, before detaining the suspects. The suspects allegedly confessed during questioning to having acquired Indochinese tigers for sale. Indochinese tigers are an endangered species. One of the suspects owned a tiger zoo in Thailand’s central province of Suphan Buri.

The suspects are a 56 year old man, a 53 year old man, a 43 year old man, and a 25 year old woman.

Tiger smuggling, and wildlife smuggling at large, remain a problem in Thailand. In April, three men confessed to importing a tiger cub from Laos. The cub was found in a basket inside a Honda pickup truck at Central Westgate Mall car park in Bang Yai district of Nonthaburi. Police seized the tiger cub and handed it over to the Wildlife Conservation Office Thailand.

Last year, several investigations showed that tourist guides and information centres in Southeast Asia had been fuelling the illegal wildlife trade by facilitating consumption by tourists. Illegal wildlife traders will often pay guides and tourist offices a commission to send people their way, said Hong Hoang, founder and executive director of CHANGE, an environmental NGO based in Vietnam.

SOURCE: Bangkok Post