(VN) Hanoi Zoo sells tiger bodies to traffickers

January 12, 2008

South China Morning Post

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Reuters in Hanoi

Jan 11, 2008

Hanoi Zoo has admitted selling dead tigers at auctions to animal

traffickers, the latest in a series of violations of international

conservation laws aimed at protecting the endangered Indochina tiger,

according to newspaper reports.

Vietnamese newspapers said yesterday the money - about US$8,000 each for two

tigers - was deposited into the zoo's bank account. Some carried photos of

the official receipt, but zoo officials declined to comment when contacted

about the reports.

Tiger bones and other wild animal body parts, smuggled from neighbouring

countries and around Vietnam, are used to make traditional medicines in

Southeast Asia.

The tigers were reported to have died of diseases at the zoo, but they

should have been cremated under the Convention on International Trade in

Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or Cites, signed by Vietnam in

1994.

The zoo's admission comes after officials said they had seized two live

tigers from a car driving through the Vietnamese capital on Monday and

arrested two suspected animal traffickers.

They led police to a house where frozen pieces of four tiger bodies were

stored along with stoves used for cooking glue from animal bones. Police

said suspected trafficker Nguyen Quoc Truong told them that he had legally

bought two of the dead tigers from the zoo.

A zoo official was quoted by newspapers as saying the tiger bodies were sold

to Truong without the approval of the Hanoi forestry management agency.

Last September, police found two frozen tigers in a fridge and two soup

kettles filled with animal bones in an outdoor kitchen in Hanoi. The animal

parts were cooked to make traditional medicines sold for about US$800 per

100 grams.

Also last year, eight men were jailed for up to 11 years for poisoning a

tiger in a zoo and selling it for US$15,000 in the southern province of Tien

Giang.

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