Tiger Temple

Tiger Temple, or Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua Yanasampanno, was a Theravada Buddhist temple in the Sai Yok District of Thailand's Kanchanaburi Province in the west of the country. It was founded in 1994 as a forest temple and sanctuary for wild animals, among them tigers, mostly Indochinese tigers. The Tiger Temple charges an admission fee.

The temple has long been accused by animal rights activists of mistreating the tigers for commercial gain and even trafficking some of its animals, though in 2005 it was cleared of allegations of animal mistreatment in an investigation by wildlife officials and a raid by Thai soldiers. Charges were pressed for unlicensed possession of 38 protected birds found on the temple grounds.

In May 2016, the Thailand Wildlife Conservation Office (WCO) began capturing and relocating the tigers, intending to close the facility. Authorities counted 137 tigers on the premises, and the frozen bodies of 40 cubs, some of them dead for more than five years.

Currently there is a fundraiser in place to raise money to build large enclosures for the Temple tigers at the government facilities they have been relocated to.

In 1999, the temple received its first tiger cub, one that had been found by villagers. It died soon after. Later, several tiger cubs were given to the temple. As of January 2016, the number of tigers living at the temple exceeded 150.

The original eight tigers brought to the temple were rescues, and thus far DNA data is incomplete and therefore unavailable to the public, as the pedigree of the tigers is not entirely known. However, it is presumed that they are Indochinese tigers, except Mek, a Bengal tiger. It is possible that some may be the newly discovered Malayan tigers, as well as cross breeds or hybrids.

It is claimed that the Tiger Temple's philosophy for animal conservation is flawed, and an organization called Care for the Wild International claimed that based on information collected between 2005 and 2008, the Tiger Temple is involved in clandestine exchange of tigers with the owner of a tiger farm in Laos contravening the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and national laws of Thailand and Laos. It claimed it operates as a tiger breeding facility without having a license as required under the Thai Wild Animals Reservation and Protection Act of 1992.

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