You additionally produce other ‘facilities of concern’ where there’s a danger of criminality. Although the authorities conduct frequent inspections at these amenities, every part is checked visually. Individual tigers usually can’t be distinguished on sight and the authorities depend on the proprietor’s data to verify that the variety of tigers on the e book matches these bodily on the facility. This means swapping and laundering of tigers can simply happen.
Basement operations and different tiger farms can perpetuate and stimulate the demand for the unlawful commerce in tigers, their components, and merchandise by persevering with to feed client demand. This additional threatens tigers within the wild and they’ll proceed to be illegally killed so long as there’s demand driving the commerce.
Q: How can we enhance the administration of captive tiger amenities in Viet Nam?
A: As I discussed earlier, all inspections and checks of tigers are carried out visually, leaving gaps for illicit actions to use. Therefore one space of enchancment is to deal with this.
Having a nationwide database of DNA samples of all captive tigers helps the authorities to definitively distinguish between individual tigers, decide whether or not tigers have been moved between amenities, and determine if registered tigers have entered unlawful markets.
Adding pictures of tigers’ stripe patterns to this database would additionally enhance the administration of those amenities. Each tiger’s stripe patterns are distinctive, like our fingerprints, and would assist authorities establish tigers within the amenities but in addition tigers which can be discovered within the unlawful commerce.
Implemented collectively, a DNA and photographic database would make sure that captive amenities are correctly managed and regulation enforcement brokers are well-equipped to establish any laundering and unlawful commerce of tigers from amenities in Viet Nam.
Q: Has the federal government and WWF had any success amassing DNA samples and pictures of stripe patterns from any captive amenities in Viet Nam?
A: So far we now have collected DNA samples from a complete of 44 captive tigers at three amenities.
Our final go to was to 2 amenities within the southern a part of the nation, only a brief drive from Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam’s largest metropolis. Our work on the first facility went properly, though there was some convincing to get the proprietor to permit us to dart their white tigers as a result of they mistakenly thought ‘white tigers usually are not the identical as orange tigers’.
