Piles of fresh tiger meat alongside the paws of slaughtered bears found by Thai police during a raid on a suburban Bangkok home have turned the spotlight on Thailand's pivotal role in Asia's huge, lucrative and cruel trade in exotic, often endangered animals.
Almost more surprising than what police found was the raid itself -- one of a series of now almost daily operations against wildlife traffickers. For decades, Thailand's heritage of teak forests and richly varied wildlife has fallen prey to the plunder of grasping politicians, military officers and ruthless entrepreneurs, largely ignored by government.
But the present government, led by former billionaire tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra, has changed course and launched a crackdown on the trade with the declared aim of cleaning it up by year's end.
The raid on the home of a known dealer in the Nonthaburi area of Bangkok makes clear just how challenging an undertaking this may prove. Police found more than 100 animals, alive and dead, including six live tigers -- some appeared to have been bred in captivity for commercial use.
They found the skins of several other tigers and three stuffed baby tigers. Alongside the paws of at least four bears was the skull of a rare Vietnamese saola deer and from the deep freeze they recovered the body of a baby orangutan smuggled from Indonesia.
Thailand has for years served as a major conduit for a trade conservationists estimate is worth billions of dollars a year -- surpassed in value only by the trade in drugs and arms. Sometimes these trades overlap. Officials have found drugs stored in the stomachs of animals and they suspect that the vehicles which carry smuggled animals in one direction sometimes carry narcotics on the return journey.
Thailand is a key transit route for animals captured in Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma and Cambodia. Most are destined for China to satisfy demand for traditional medicines believed to enhance health and sexual potency.
"The trade has been on an upswing in the last three to four years, mainly due to the demand of a growing middle class in China for certain animal products," said Steven Galster, director of WildAid's office in Thailand.
Officials say that in just seven months last year they intercepted more than 21,000 reptiles and 1,800 mammals being transported across Thailand. But increasing seizures are little deterrent to traders who can earn thousands of dollars from a single tiger skin but who face a maximum penalty of US$1,000 or four months in prison -- a sentence not yet imposed.
The Nonthaburi raid also pointed to a thriving underground business catering to the appetites of visitors who join tours to Southeast Asia specifically to eat the meat of rare species. Chinese and Koreans join tours to Thailand where middlemen guide them to secret restaurants where their agents guarantee the freshness of the product.
Preparing food to the standard required by these high-po the animals. Tradition has it that adrenalin generated by pain and fear enhance the quality of a bear's gall bladder or its paws.
In some instances, says Galster, paws are sliced off live bears. In other cases they may be tossed into a steeply-sided and flooded pit where they struggle for hours before drowning.
The impact of the demand for animals is equally traumatic on the jungles of Asia. Exotic species are being plundered at a rate far beyond anything the environment can sustain. Twenty-five tonnes of turtles leave the Sumatra every week. "There are 6,000 orangutans left in Sumatra and they are losing a thousand a year," said Galster.
"Many species have been pushed to the edge and if things don't change they will be extinct in the next few years," said David Shepard of Traffic, a non-governmental organization monitoring the trade. "Animals like the pangolin could disappear before we know anything about them."
Conservationists are hoping Thailand's crackdown could start to curb the trade. Raids are targeting not just traders' homes but also the zoos and farms owned by businessmen whose connections had helped to fend off suspicions they were fronts for illegal trading.
Last week police moved in on Si Racha tiger farm, ranked among the biggest in the world, which supplies live tigers to China. Police said they found several hundred animals that owners could not properly account for.
Thailand's Environment Minister now says he will seek harsher penalties for smuggling exotic species and one senior official this month called for the death penalty for animal traffickers.
Skeptics fear the crackdown will be short-lived.
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