Trip to 7-Eleven leads Bangkok police to tiger butchers

It isn't every day that a man with bloody hands emerges from a convenience store and returns home to continue chopping up tigers, zebras and wild buffalo in an underground slaughterhouse. So Thai police officers on a routine street patrol in north-east Bangkok had a lucky break when, by chance, they crossed paths with a member of a wild animal meat gang who had nipped out to buy some butchering supplies.

On following the man, Thai police discovered four other men chopping up a large male tiger. Zebra, crocodile, wild buffalo and elephant carcasses, along with 400kg of tiger meat, were also found in the building, ready to be sold as exotic meat and trophies. "We found one tiger in an ice box, where it was being preserved with formaldehyde, and a lot of bones. On the floor, there were fresh cuts of white tiger, elephant and lion skins," the Thai nature crime police commander, Colonel Norasak Hemnithi, said. "The suspects later told us that they had gone out looking for ice to store the fresh meats."



Police have since arrested eight people, including the alleged mastermind, in what they and local wildlife organisations believe is a smuggling operation fronted by Bangkok zoos. The case has shed light on Thailand's place at the heart of an estimated $10bn global trade in endangered species that is driving many plants and animals to extinction, according to wildlife groups. It highlights a worrying trend in which the meat of endangered animals is sold in resort restaurants in southern Thailand.

Demand for trophy items and exotic meats across Asia, but particularly in China, has driven up the trade in elephants, big cats, reptiles and birds. The anti-wildlife trafficking group Freeland, which is working with police on the investigation, suspects the animals came from, or were sold through, private zoos in Thailand. "It's hard for police to go after zoos because there's a legal loophole [here] that can easily be used to front a breeding operation. Zoos have a permit to own tigers, so they can breed the tigers and sell the offspring," said a Freeland spokesman, Roy Schlieben, adding that an adult tiger could fetch more than $10,000.