May 7, 2008
RATCHABURI, Thailand – The wild life centres are put under stress after crackdown on traffickers.
The tigers are eating cheap chicken rather than expensive beef, and keepers only let the big cats mate one day a year to limit the number of new mouths to feed.
"We can stop other plans, but we cannot stop animals from eating," the centre's director Pornchai Patumrattanathan said, wandering between the rusting cages at the conservation and breeding centre in Thailand's western Ratchaburi province.
With its highly developed infrastructure and location, Thailand is a transportation centre for the thriving illicit animal trade in Southeast Asia.
Crackdown on the illegal trafficking of animals seems to add more pressure to the country's wildlife centres.
The number of animals being confiscated -- mostly endangered birds -- has more than doubled to 8,300 in 2007 from 4,000 in 2005, according to Thailand's Wildlife Conservation Office.
Thai law requires confiscated animals to be held until a court closes the trafficking case, which Pornchai says can take anywhere between nine months and five years.
Even if an illegal trader evades arrest, the state keeps the animal for five years while investigating, he said.
All this costs money, and the office's budget for 2008 is eight million baht (253,000 dollars). But it needs 17 million baht to deal with the flood of animals, according to office director Samart Sumanochitraporn.
Thai government has instead asked the conservation centres to cut their budgets by 20 percent this year.
The centre tries to lower costs by growing its own fruit and collecting leaves and grass twice a day, but that is hardly enough to provide for the 523 animals in the 22-year-old Ratchaburi centre, according to AFP.
Eighty percent of the animals at Pornchai's centre were confiscated and the rest were born there, donated or captured.
The centre specialises in breeding big cats but has had to limit the tigers' mating because of tight funds.
The inflow of animals also has the centre's keepers dealing with creatures they have never worked with before.
Last year they had to rearrange cages to house 53 orangutans trafficked out of Indonesia.
And despite no experience with elephants, the centre became home to a baby elephant nine months ago and now it is advising a centre in southern Thailand how to care for a new calf.
