Tiger Temple, or Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua,

Tiger Temple, or Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua, is a Theravada Buddhist temple in westernThailand that was founded in 1994 as a forest temple and sanctuary for wild animals, among them several tigers, the majority of which are Indochinese tigers. The temple is located in the Saiyok district of Thailand'sKanchanaburi province, not far from the border with Myanmar, some 38 km (24 mi) north-west of Kanchanaburi along the 323 highway.

The tigersEdit

Monk walking tiger on a leash

Monk and tigers during walk in the quarry

Tourists observing the tigers

Visitors can take a photo with a grown tiger or a small cub

In 1999, the temple received the 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 May 2012, the total number of tigers living at the temple has risen to over 100.^{[citation needed]}

Because of a lack of managed breeding programmes and publicly available DNA data, the pedigree of the tigers is not known. However, it is presumed that they areIndochinese Tigers, except Mek, who is aBengal Tiger. It is possible that some may be the newly discovered Malayan Tigers, while many probably are cross breeds or hybrids.

Issues and reportsEdit

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 Speciesand national laws of Thailand and Laos. It claimed it operates as a tiger breeding facility without having a respective license as required under the Thai Wild Animals Reservation and Protection Act of 1992.^[1]

Based on the Care for the Wild International report, a coalition of 39 conservation groups, including the Humane Society International, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, theWorld Society for the Protection of Animalsand the World Wide Fund for Nature, penned a letter to the Director General of National Parks in Thailand under the name 'The International Tiger Coalition'.^[2] This letter urged the Director General to take action against the Tiger Temple over its import and export of 12 tigers with Laos, its lack of connection with accredited conservation breeding programmes, and to genetically test the tigers at the Tiger Temple in order to determine their pedigree and value to tiger conservation programmes. It concludes that the 'Temple does not have the facilities, the skills, the relationships with accredited zoos, or even the desire to manage its tigers in an appropriate fashion. Instead, it is motivated both in display of the tigers to tourists and in its illegal trading of tigers purely by profit.

In December 2008, ABC News spent three days at the temple and did not see any evidence of drugging or mistreating the animals. Both Thai and Western employees who were interviewed claimed that the animals were well treated. The abbot of the monastery stated that the eventual goal was to breed tigers for release in the wild.^[3]