Thailand’s Tiger Kingpins | Unreported World

[Music] tigers once ruled thailand's jungles in 40 years they've all but vanished but under the darkening canopy a flicker you want to hear a bit of good news for once tiger numbers here in thailand are recovering against the odds it's a precarious resurgence threatened by the now insatiable demand for tiger medicines in vietnam and china [Music] hello we go undercover and track down suspected tiger dealers and we meet the smugglers who've made millions from a sinister sometimes deadly trade in both farmed and wild tigers [Music] the tenacim a remote and rugged range whose jungled watersheds feed three mighty rivers straddling the frontier between thailand and myanmar in this vast tract of forest bears elephants leopards and more tigers than anywhere else in the region they might be clawing back but fewer than 200 tigers today roam wild in thailand with a handful in neighboring myanmar everywhere else in this region poachers have cleaned them out we're with wildlife rangers who are on a 10-day expedition patrolling for poachers and checking camera traps for fresh evidence of a tiger revival another really steep bit tiger is the top of a food pyramid so it's quite important that if we can like get the evidence tigers are visiting us evidence of plenty of tigers indicates an abundance of prey siphon city hmong khan an ecologist with this tiger monitoring team says tigers are the ultimate barometer of a healthy ecosystem so we've arrived at the first tiger camera trap location it's uh quite a bit down off the trail following dr seif on down to it but um these cards are encrypted so we won't be able to see what's on it until we get it back to base so what what what are we doing here more than 100 cameras record any tiger wandering past location data must be kept secret in case poachers get hold of it and this particular grid that we're in i mean you've had quite a lot of tigers here it's possible that we can uh get the tiger picture from here because we see some evidence on the main trail right yeah but it's possible because they said they can go anywhere but these like have high possibility to get their picture here okay fingers crossed yeah finger fries worldwide there are fewer than 4 000 tigers in the wild today now though they're breeding here in thailand this little cub had his selfie taken by one of these camera traps he was born in this park but when they're big a wild indo-chinese tiger is worth more than 20 thousand pounds when he's butchered for his bones his meat and his pelt this tiger was photographed in attractive jungle not very far from where we were camped not long afterwards these pictures emerged from inside neighboring myanmar same tiger identified by thai authorities from its unique stripe pattern camera traps also catch poachers they're armed and dangerous and rangers have been killed in gun battles the rangers are poorly paid and badly equipped no life insurance yet they're on the front line of global conservation [Applause] what happens if tigers disappear here could that happen [Applause] foreign the mekong snakes down the long border between thailand and laos we've crossed the country to the far northeast because we'd heard that these borderlands are the hub of the tiger trade there are smugglers nirvana we're near the town of mukhtahan from the far side it's just a few hours drive to vietnam the biggest tiger products consumer outside of china you know it's just one kilometer from one side to the other here and while the thai marine police do their sporadic patrols it's not exactly difficult for a small boats to slip across the river particularly under cover of darkness anti-trafficking investigators have told us that a small bribe goes a very long way on both sides of the mekong the trade isn't just in wild tigers we learned that tigers are farmed in registered zoos they're also slaughtered and smuggled [Music] and live cubs are trafficked too every so often the cops make a cubs bust sixteen were intercepted on route to laos a few years back as dusk settles the riverine underworld comes to life unlit boats glide silently back and forth in the blackness in thailand they call it the river of sin we found a smuggler willing to tell us how the tiger trade worked on condition of anonymity he claimed he'd trafficked five to eight tigers a month over five years but that he'd now left the trade so how much money is there to be made out of this business how deeply involved are the police in this business he said it became obvious that wild tigers were getting harder and harder to source reports [Music] we are unable to verify the smugglers allegations but corruption is perceived to be rife in thailand the royal thai police has committed to fighting corruption within its ranks the thai authorities are now zeroing in on some of the 51 private zoos holding captive tigers some are believed to be illegally farming tigers to supply the medicine market in vietnam and china one of the zoos that's under suspicion is just down the road on the outskirts of mukhtahan so this country road leads to the mukhtar tiger zoo which by all accounts isn't really a zoo at all in fact it's been raided several times over the past decade by the department of national parks and wildlife and one senior thai wildlife official told us that it's suspected of being a tiger cub factory [Music] late last year officers made a grisly discovery in a raid on the mukhtar tiger zoo a preserved tiger's head although no sign of the rest of it stripes are checked against records under thai law zoo owners have to register tigers several were impounded on suspicion they'd been smuggled and were taken for dna testing in all five tigers all with falsified records were being held in a zoo in a town known for smuggling the zoo's owner of sombit tamawet was charged with making false claims and with illegal possession of wildlife but some did the owner wasn't there turns out he never is when these raids happen so we decided we'd pay someday tamawet a surprise visit hello sweaty club we're using covert cameras it's a fortress locals told us they're wary of this place and the tourists don't come here can we come in had been served with a temporary closure order but they let us in anyway and guess who was here summed it himself we really like to see the liger because we believe he has a liger a liger is a cross between a lion and a tiger i told him i'd heard he'd bred one sure he said it's in the next cage he can show you how do we get to see the tigers we have to think of a way to go and see them the liger's name was jumbo he didn't look very happy it's not even a recognized species so there are a few restrictions on keeping them breeding curiosity cats like ligers for entertainment purposes is not illegal but it's widely deemed unethical jumbo's still considered a cub he's only about two but ligers grow to an immense size much bigger than lions or tigers they also suffer high mortality rates and birth defects are common i asked if we could see his tigers too but he said no we're meant to be closed we summed it unaware we were filming we pressed for information you have any small little baby ones that we could see he didn't have any cubs he said hey officials had told us this place had never been open to tourists so where did the cubs end up i saw that this zoo is also accused of breeding tigers for sale is that true he's instantly on the defensive line but do you think that by having a tiger zoo like this you are actually assisting in the conservation of tigers but no captive tiger has ever been successfully introduced to the wild and anyway the tigers in thai zoos are hybrids not purebred indo-chinese tigers an official investigating tiger farms told us hybrid stock is bred big and heavy to be slaughtered frozen and shipped by the kilo we wandered down along the enclosures while zombitt claims he's not breeding tigers there appears to be something else going on in plain sight in here you've got a a male lion and a female tiger i would reckon from which they're hoping to breed another liger like the one in the next cage he just told us that they never get out of these enclosures they're here for life and that's a pretty grim existence as if there was any doubt about what was going on here the animals did as nature had never intended [Music] we'd been unable to see someday's tigers ourselves but that was going to change mukhtar taiga zoo was about to get raided again there's plenty of money to be made in trading dead tigers and live cubs across the mekong river but there's another wildlife business that's just as lucrative right here in thailand tiger selfies you can cuddle adorable cubs or posed with the big guys some owners insist the tigers aren't drugged but they do appear unnaturally docile a money spinner sustained in normal times by 40 million tourists a year 11 million of them from china during covent thais have taken up the slack the tiger selfie industry is booming even these days hardly any chinese tourists around the number of captive tigers in thai tourist entertainment venues has nearly trebled in a decade the tiny cubs could be handled hundreds of times a day monetized from birth when the tigers are no longer so cute and cuddly their value can become their performance ability but if you're a tiger there are arguably worse places to be [Music] we're tipped off that the regional national parks chief is about to raid the mook to tiger zoo again to lay fresh charges against the owner someday tamaweet chief chai watt is greeted by someday's son who is expecting him then is leading a multi-agency task force [Music] dna results on the tigers he'd seized late last year showed the zoo's paperwork had been falsified [Music] we're finally able to go and see somebody's tigers for ourselves this is absolutely shocking seeing the inside of this finally these tigers this this this one's in a in a space about not even three meters square there's another one in behind it there's another one here these are big animals many of them are quite clearly distressed they've got nothing in these enclosures at all and they're pacing and pacing and pacing in the wild tigers roam 20 miles in a single night what's striking here is that there aren't any cubs 50 adult tigers but last year just one cub registered the park's chief knows the numbers don't add up then outside he's engaged in a public interrogation of someday's son chief chai what is acknowledged by wildlife campaigners to be a thorn in the flesh of the tiger trade but he's currently fighting allegations of dereliction of duty in a past posting he's a highly controversial figure with enemies on all sides he's questioning it's son about trading tigers with known vietnamese traffickers so he has just denied all the allegations that china has put to him about this tiger about other animals in this supposed zoo about trafficking of animals across the mekong into vietnam and beyond chiwat's enforcement officers accompanied by wildlife vets are checking stripes against records this place is meant to be a zoo it's registered as a zoo it's been a zoo for 10 years nobody comes here so if he's not breeding what's he doing bingo there are more than 60 animals here and there's not strongly suspects this zoo is involved in the trafficking of tigers but he says he can't prove it yet someday now faces five charges which if they stick could land him in jail for more than eight years we asked zombit to respond to the allegations but we did not receive a reply tiger farms masquerading as zoos supply raw meat for testosterone-fueled feasts in china and vietnam bones for quack medicines and tiger viagra at the sharp end the tiger trade is a bloody business this is one of the country's most notorious tiger traders a larger-than-life character called lutai tuacharon after 20 years of operating and just one previous conviction he was caught by police with a freshly butchered wild tiger in his boot this is the tiger caught in a camera trap in the jungle of western thailand she'd had two cubs which were never located louis was sentenced to two years in jail but got out after less than a year thanks to an amnesty from the king [Music] luitai's infamy persists in the tiger trade he's known by his thai nickname which means fatty we tracked him down to a house in the back streets of old bangkok and unbelievably he's agreed to meet us liutai told us he butchered and traded hundreds of tigers over a 20-year period he claims not to be in the business anymore right you [Music] squandered his ill-gotten gains on what he called his many wives and living the high life hello i just said that he's now destitute and in very poor health ties say it's karma it was also becoming clear he didn't want any more questions no regrets no remorse [Music] back on thailand's frontier with myanmar there's a secret watering hull where wild tigers can still bask in a jungle jacuzzi after years of precipitous decline in their numbers the tigers tenuous resurgence comes down to one thing protection their pristine lair the front line of a war against the agents of extinction [Music] you

Channel: Unreported World

Views: 87,651

Rating: 4.8859005 out of 5

Keywords: Unreported world, unreported world documentary, thailand, tigers, thailand tigers, tiger conservation, tiger protection, tiger poachers, tiger smugglers, animal rights, animal welfare, PETA, exotic animals, south east asia, thai jungle, liger, tiger zoo, tiger selfie, tiger exploitation

Id: Y7jmyp6pJps

Length: 24min 3sec (1443 seconds)

Published: Mon May 31 2021