Conservation or profiteering?

Away from the beautiful temples and seemless shopping in Thailand,  the Tiger Temple in the Saiyok district is fast becoming one of the country’s leading tourist attractions. A documentary on National Geographic helped immeasureably to propel this attraction further.

The Tiger Temple or Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua is a Theravada Buddhist temple founded in 1994 as a forest temple and sanctuary for wild animals. The temple received its first tiger cub in 1999 which had been found by local villagers, however the cub died soon afterwards. Later several tiger cubs were given to the temple and now there are well over one hundred tigers living in the Tiger Temple.

Billed as a sanctuary  to protect these beautiful big cats, the Tiger Temple has in recent years courted a fair amount of controversy and has become one of the most popular and controversial tourist destinations in Southeast Asia. Leading tour operators and hotel organise day trips to the Tiger Temple where you are allowed to stroke these majestic animals held in a large sized pen called the Tiger Canyon.

In actual fact the animals are  chained to the ground and volunteers lead you by the hand to these tigers where you can sit behind them and stroke them while the volunteer photographs you. Most of these tigers appear to be sleeping, although they will occasionally flick their tail or lift their head. However most of the time they appear to be in a slumber.

The temple claims that they are protecting the tigers brought to them citing the fact that the tigers are fast becoming an endangered species, however their critics claims that the Temple’s philosophy for animal conservation is deeply flawed. Several international organisations  involved in the welfare of animals have claimed that the Tiger Temple is involved in the clandestine exchange of tigers and is not part of an accredited breeding program. Particularly vociferous in its criticisms against the Tiger Temple is the Care of the Wild International Society. Based on their report a coalition of 39 conservation groups concludes that the Temple’s facilities are inadequate and the Temple lacks the skills and even the desire to manage its tigers in an appropriate fashion and allege that the Temple is motivated not only by its desire to display tigers to tourists and earn money but also in its illegal trading of tigers purely for profit. Contradicting these allegations in 2008, ABC news spent three days at the temple and state they did not see any evidence of drugging or mistreating the animals. Additionally both Thai and Western employees many of them young volunteers claimed that the animals were well cared for and the abbot of the monastry stated that the eventual goal was to breed tigers to release them into the wild.

As long as the Tiger Temple in Thailand is in operation, it is sure to court controversy with both groups across the divide arguing for and against it. I had long been fascinated by the Tiger Temple after watching a documentary on it and after seeing the place for myself I can only say that this place is only marginally better than a zoo and if the Temple is genuinely concerned about the welfare of the tigers then they should hand it over to proper trained authorities who can successfully implement the breeding program without subjecting these magnificent beasts to a daily ritual of public gawping and patting and instead allow these animals to live their lives in peace and dignity.

By Tina Edward Gunawardhana