Authorities intercept man trying to leave a day after dozens of dead tiger cubs found in Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua temple freezer
Thai wildlife officers load a tiger on to a truck outside the temple in Kanchanaburi province. Photograph: Dario Pignatelli/Getty
Wildlife authorities in Thailand have found adult tiger skins and fangs during a raid on the “tiger temple” tourist attraction and intercepted a monk who was trying to leave in a car that was carrying skins. Separately, officials said they would press charges against the Buddhist temple after 40 tiger cubs were found in a freezer on Wednesday.
“Today we found tigers skins and amulets in a car which was trying to leave a temple,” said Adisorn Noochdumrong, the deputy director of the DNP. He said a search of several monks’ quarters yielded further body parts, bringing Thursday’s haul to two full-body tiger skins, about 10 fangs and dozens of pieces of tiger fur.
Volunteers, staff and monks at Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua temple complex have long denied trafficking allegations. But international animal rights groups including WWF and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals applauded the raid. Police Col Bandith Meungsukhum told AFP the dead cubs would have been one or two days old. He said their DNA would be tested to see if they were related to tigers at the temple.
The temple claims it decided in 2010 to stop cremating the cubs and preserve them to “keep as proof against the allegations of selling cubs”.
Thailand is a central route for the illegal wildlife trade through south-east Asia, including for ivory, rhino horn and live animals. Tiger parts, including bones and penises, are used in traditional Chinese medicine.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species banned the trade in tiger parts and products in 2007. The raid is the culmination of a battle that has been going on for years between the government and the temple. Thailand has an estimated 1,200-1,300 captive tigers.
“As the CITIES conference comes to the end of its first week, I thought I would just add the video in along with this post. Born Free’s CEO Will Travis, talks about some of the issues raised. Although I can’t believe the bid to halt the polar bear trade, was just swept under the table…WTF… Russia, Canada & the US…really have left the polar bears out in the cold…literally! I’m disgusted with their decision; same goes for the poor manatee!! I can’t wait to see what rubbish they come up with next week, for protecting species round the world; who are just about hanging on with their teeth!! Do the delegates from their respective country, actually know the danger some species are in?? I have my doubts given the first weeks bungles, honestly some of them are about as much use as a chocolate fire guard. Take about 30 of us animal advocates from face book, stick us round a table; & I’m sure we could come up with plans to help those in need!!”
Today saw the launch of the first ever internationally coordinated enforcement investigation into the online ivory trade.
Summing up week one at the CITES meeting in Bangkok
Published on 8 Mar 2013
Will Travers, CEO of Born Free, sums up week one at CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) meeting, covering secret ballots, elephants, rhino, polar bears, manatees and turtles.
The report revealed that there were hundreds of ivory items conservatively valued at approximately EUR 1,450,000 for sale during a two-week period on Internet auction sites in nine European countries.
During this survey of sites by enforcers, more than 660 advertisements for ivory on 61 different auction sites were analysed and as a result of the surveillance, six national and three international investigations were launched in cases where ivory was described as new or where ivory was being traded from abroad.
The 177 countries that are Party to CITES have already agreed, thanks in part to IFAW’s lobbying efforts, to investigate and prosecute wildlife criminals trading online as well as evaluate or develop their domestic measures to ensure they are sufficient to fight online wildlife crime.
While at least one country has strengthened their legislation to specifically target online wildlife crime and a small number of countries have started to develop strategies for tackling illegal wildlife sales on the internet, many more countries need to deliver on their promise and stamp out online wildlife crime.
Since 2004 IFAW has been highlighting the growing global threat posed by online wildlife crime to endangered wildlife. A series of IFAW investigations have repeatedly shown that there are thousands of wild animals and wildlife ‘products’, such as ivory, available for sale on the internet all over the world.
Stop The Ivory trade
IFAW has found live primates, big cats, birds and reptiles advertised online while animal parts from rhino’s, elephants, sharks, Tibetan antelopes and sturgeon have also been available to purchase on the internet.
In January 2012, IFAW’s online monitoring found 17,847 ivory products listed on 13 Chinese websites, even though none of these products had the necessary Government approval.
Meanwhile, a four-week investigation in the United Arab Emirates and some neighbouring Arab countries in the same year found 796 adverts featuring live wildlife over 11 websites. None of the adverts had any documentary proof to demonstrate that the sales complied with the law.
In Europe an IFAW investigation in 2011 found a thriving trade in ivory items. The investigation tracked 43 sites in the UK, France, Portugal, Spain and Germany for a two-week period and found 669 advertisements for ivory.
The statistics are disturbing but can be hard to comprehend so let me give you one example that shows the horrors of this illegal trade.
In 2010 a British couple admitted 12 counts of illegally exporting, three of illegally importing, seven of illegally selling and two of illegally possessing specimens under the Customs and Excise Management Act.
The couple in question had been selling animal body parts from owls, a baboon, macaque monkeys, a python, an African penguin, an African lion cub and a Malaysian flying fox.
These items were kept in a store room full of skulls and other animal body parts which, when I saw the pictures, made me think it as a room of death for wildlife.
Highlighting the problem of this trade is an important first step but IFAW has been going one stage further and engaging website companies, law enforcers and Governments in our campaign to stamp out online wildlife crime.
After our 2008 Killing with Keystrokes investigation, where we found ivory was the number one wildlife product being traded online, we encouraged eBay to ban the sale of ivory on their websites and IFAW was very pleased to see them announce this ban in January 2009.
Meanwhile other websites have since followed suit including Alibaba (www.taobao.com) in China, the world’s largest business-to-business and outsource portal site for traders.
However, while banning the sale of wildlife products on websites does restrict unscrupulous traders’ ability to easily profit from these products, there is clearly a need for enforcers to ramp up their efforts.
We have seen traders time and again attempting to disguise their wildlife products to avoid detection by police, customs or website companies such as eBay.
In addition to working with INTERPOL IFAW is working with enforcement agencies across the world to catch online wildlife criminals by sharing the findings of our online investigations, facilitating international enforcement operations and by bringing together website companies and enforcement agencies in order that they can work in partnership in their fight against illegal wildlife sales on the internet.
“This news arrived in my inbox. Just devastating news from the CITES convention for polar bears…who it seems are going to be left out in the cold!!! Watch the video then read the briefing below!!
Will Travers, Born Free CEO, is saddened by today’s vote at the Bangkok meeting of CITES, which soundly rejected a proposal to increase protection from commercial trade for the polar bear, imperiled by the impacts of climate change.
This species, completely dependent on sea ice for survival, has seen its number s fall to around 20,000-25,000 in recent years. This has in part been caused by a dramatic decrease in the extent of both winter and summer sea ice (showing a reduction of up to 20%) over the past 30 years, exacerbated by hunting for domestic and international trade amongst other factors.
Found in just five countries in the circumpolar region (Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Russian Federation, and the United States), this species has caught the attention of the international community in recent years as the story of their decline has become common knowledge.
So, what will CITES Parties do to increase its protection and offer a life line to the world’s largest and best known bear species…WELL NOTHING!!!!
The precautionary principle, on which this proposal was largely based states that ‘where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation’.
So what this means is that if we are not sure of the effects an action is having, better to stop and reassess rather than proceed, possibly past the point of no return.
Today however, the Parties to CITES unfortunately threw precaution to the wind and voted not to increase global protection through greater trade restrictions despite the numerous current and ever looming threats to this species. It remains to be seen how this will contribute to the polar bear’s demise
Polar bears are inquisitive, flexible and opportunistic, adept at exploiting their Arctic habitat. Global warming is considered to be polar bears’ greatest threat and causes ice to melt earlier and freeze later.
Bears have less time to hunt, have a longer summer fast and wait longer to resume hunting, causing loss of condition andpotential conflict situations when hungry bears come in contact with people. Meanwhile in captivity, intelligent and adaptable polar bears can suffer particularly badly in zoos, circuses and marine parks.
Polar bears are dying. As global warming accelerates, the sea ice they depend on for survival is literally melting away. Bears are starving and drowning as they have to swim farther and farther to reach solid ice. Some are even turning to cannibalism in a desperate search for food. Those trapped on land hundreds of miles from the nearest ice often wander near villages in search of food and are shot.
As if that weren’t enough, oil and gas drilling is destroying and polluting their fast-dwindling Arctic habitat.
A third of all polar bears — including all bears in Alaska — will be extinct by 2050 if current trends continue.The rest of the species will be gone by the end of the century.
But it’s not too late to save the polar bear if we join together and take immediate action. The science is clear. We know what needs to be done — we just need to build the political support to do it.
Please sign the petition below to encourage President Barack Obama to rein in global warming and save the polar bear now.
Click the link below to sign the petition please:-
An international conference of 178 member nations of an environmental group opts to allow trading of polar bear parts to continue.An international ban on trade in polar bears has been banned because of fears it would distract from the bigger threat of global warming. The proposal put to representatives of the 178 member nations of the Convention on International Trade In Endangered Species (Cites) had divided conservationists. They all agreed that the main risk to the world’s largest carnivorous land animal came from habitat loss but differed over whether international trade also put the bears at risk of extinction. Polar bears, widely seen as the animal on the front line of global warming, are predicted to be hard hit by melting polar ice caps. But the debate at the Cites meeting in Bangkok focused on the additional threat to the species posed by international trade. “The polar bear is facing a grim future, and today brought more bad news,” said US delegation head Dan Ashe who warned the polar bear population could fall by two-thirds by 2050. “The continued harvest of polar bears to supply the commercial international trade is not sustainable.” The ban was rejected by 42 votes to 38, with 46 abstentions among the nations who participated in the poll in Bangkok – the proposal needed a two-thirds’ majority support to be passed.
Polar bears are prized for their skins – particularly in Russia – as well as other body parts such as skulls, claws and teeth and their are strict controls over their international trade.
About half of the roughly 800 polar bears killed each year end up in the international trade, mostly wild bears from Canada, according to expert estimates cited by the US.
The US, Canada, Russia, Denmark (Greenland) and Norway are home to a global population of 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears.
The WWF, which chose to oppose the ban in favour of concentrating on global warming said “habitat loss from climate warming, not international trade, is the primary driver” of an expected population decline.
Canada, which hosts the largest portion of the global population of polar bears and is the only country that still exports polar bear parts, opposed a ban, citing the need to preserve the traditions of the Inuit, an indigenous minority living mostly in the north of the country.
“The polar bear advances strong emotion. It is an iconic symbol of the Arctic,” said Canadian delegate Basile Van Havre. Глобальный запрет на Polar Bear торговли Отклонен ホッキョクグマ貿易に関する世界的な禁止が下がってい 全球北極熊的貿易禁止拒絕 Prohibición mundial de oso polar Comercio Rechazado Proibição global de urso polar Comércio recusou
Please sign, Just a few on-line petitions to help save the polar bear:-
“Several days ago I posted a picture of how baby elephants are trained. Now I want to show the video, of how these gentle sentient beings are ripped from their mothers & forced to endure pain, whilst learning to do tricks for the circus. I have covered this previously the links are at the bottom, worth reading if you want to know more about this”
“There can be no doubt about it, baby & adult elephants are traumatized due to horrific training. They do the tricks because they know, not doing them will end in them being hurt.”
“Ringmasters & those who control the elephants when in the circus ring, entertaining the public…are not what they seem. Most carry what looks like a posh walking stick, but hidden in the end which comes into contact with the elephants, are very sharp nails or other similar objects; purely meant to cause pain!”
“Now see how young elephants are caught in the wild, they are literally broken, their spirit gone! PLEASE do not support this cruelty by going to circuses or any place an elephant is used for the public’s pleasure…this is real, these elephants hurt, see the pain in their eye’s…remember that the next time you see one of these beautiful giants on display for your enjoyment!”
“Still-nursing baby elephants are literally dragged from their mothers, kicking and screaming. They are immobilized, beaten mercilessly, and gouged with nails for days at a time. These ritualized “training” sessions leave the elephants badly injured, traumatized, or even dead”.
“It’s called the phajaan. Capturing elephants from the wild for this trade often involves killing of mothers and other protective family members with automatic weapons.
Look at this baby’s face…sheer torture…brutal pain…the Phajaan
Captured calves are subjected to an extremely brutal breaking-in process where they are tied up, confined, starved, beaten and tortured in order to break their spirits. It is estimated that only one in three survive this inhumane “domestication” process.”
“After reading the above, do you now realise, why they go crazy in the circus ring, causing havoc & destruction even killing their handlers…they can only take so much…do not blame them, blame those that abused them!
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Here are the images of the training of wild elephants that are caught for the tourist trade. Please remind yourself and tell others that by visiting elephant camps you are supporting this!
Edwin Wiek of the WFFT and Khun Lek (Sangduan Chailert) of ENP are now targeted by the DNP for speaking up about the illegal wild elephant poaching and trade. This video shows what the DNP doesn’t want you to see or know about!
Elephants on the streets of Chiang Mai are becoming a sad yet familiar site.
Bangkok, Jan 12 (IANS) Thai navy officials Thursday rescued over 800 dogs when they were about to be smuggled via the Mekong river to neighbouring Laos.
A Mekong river patrol unit headed by Captain Thirakiart Thong-aram found the dogs in 40 cases on a truck on the river bank in Ban Paeng district of Nakhon Panom province, Xinhua reported citing The Nation online.
The Mekong flows through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
A 37-year-old local villager has been arrested.
The dogs were to be transported to Laos to be sent further to Vietnam. About 100 empty cages were also found on the spot, which indicated that over 2,000 dogs might have already been smuggled to Vietnam, officials said.
The raid carried out by a number of enforcement organisations early this morning has led to the largest discovery of wild and endangered animals kept in captivity and ready to be traded internationally. The list of animals found in the compound is staggering and the 200 animals from 50 different species discovered included:
5 tigers,
13 white lions,
three pumas,
three kangaroos,
four flamingos,
two crowned cranes,
66 marmosets,
two orangutans, two red pandas.
The compound in Kaeng Koi, Saraburi Province, Eastern Thailand was raided by officials from Thai Nature Crime Police and Department of National Parks, Wildlife & Plant Conservation (DNP).
“This is the largest illegal wildlife supplier we’ve discovered,” said Royal Thai Police Major General Norasak Hemnithi, Commander of the Natural Resources and Environmental Crime Suppression Division (NRECSD). “We know it’s part of an international criminal network importing protected animals from Africa, Canada and other countries, then breeding them for illegal sale,” he added.
Three suspects were arrested at the scene for failing to produce any permits of documentation that allowed them to keep endangered species. The suspects are expected to be charged with breaches of legislation protecting species under CITES. The wildlife is in the process of being confiscated.
A walk through the lives of the tigers from cubs to adults to the unethical tourism of the Tiger Temple. Look at the tiger to the right, does that tiger look drugged to you??
Please help save the lives of these tigers from suffering and abuse by joining http://www.cee4life.org and become a voice for these tigers. You can also join us on Facebook Cee4life where you will find various links to the petition and other information on the tigers of the temple and ethical travel. Refuse to be a part of this exploitation and abuse of these magnificent creatures or any other creature
DUE TO THE NATURE OF THIS BLOG - SOME PICTURES & VIDEOS CAN & WILL BE VERY GRAPHIC - SO PLEASE, VIEW THIS BLOG AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.
You can find out more about me & this blog by reading "ABOUT THIS BLOG" on the menu (when i finish it) lol
PLEASE NOTE.....
Not all of my posts will be current news, or even about animal abuse! I do like to share other animal news, uplifting stories or videos; some that are funny or just touch the heart!
If I have anything to say on any post, you will see it in bold blue writing. I try to remain a lady, but it's hard to contain my anger & emotions at the some of the stories I post; I don’t have a heart of stone, tears stain many articles I write!
Lastly, my apologies for any errors; I am learning whilst posting, so if you find anything that doesn't work or a broken link, sorry, I'm only human!!!!
ABOUT THESE POSTS
I would just like to make readers aware, that I search for stories on the internet; regards animal abuse etc. I copy stories etc. from the internet; assuming these stories are correct at time of publishing. Having said that, sometimes the press get it wrong! So I just want to add that at the time of me posting a news story, I presume all the facts seem present & correct.
Please note....all people mentioned in this blog, are presumed innocent, until proven otherwise, in a court of law.
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DUE TO ANIMAL HATERS...I WILL ONLY ADD PEOPLE WHO CAN PROVE WHO THEY ARE via Facebook, Wordpress, Twitter etc. & WHO HAVE A GENUINE INTEREST IN ANIMAL WELFARE... i.e. if your Facebook page has absolutely nothing to do with animals, I see no point in joining my page. My Facebook is solely for animal welfare, I am not interested in playing games etc. I don't mean to sound rude but I am not interested in the amount of friends I have, its the quality of those friends that count.
PLEASE DO NOT SEND REQUESTS FOR YOUR FRIENDS TO JOIN. I do not want anyone to be upset by graphic images etc.
My aim is to educate & raise awareness to the horrors animals face, at the hands of humans, every day, around the world!!
We can not hope to achieve better laws, to protect animals, unless we unite as one, to speak up for those who are voiceless!!
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DUE TO THE NATURE OF THIS BLOG - SOME PICTURES & VIDEOS CAN & WILL BE VERY GRAPHIC - SO PLEASE, VIEW THIS BLOG AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.
STOP ANIMAL ABUSE 
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