Everybody makes ill-informed decisions. This photograph, taken at a popular tourist stop in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, is a testament to a recent one of mine. Photos like these are the bread and butter of the so-called “Tiger Temple,” a sprawling monastery-cum-wildlife-sanctuary a few hours outside Bangkok, which functions both as a draw for tourist dollars and a home to over 70 tigers and other animals roaming the grounds. Correction: The tigers aren’t exactly roaming. The tigers I saw during my visit were all chained, so that in the afternoons, paying visitors like yours truly can sign a quick waiver and dish over 500 baht — $16, roughly the equivalent of a (legal) massage in Bangkok — to get up close and personal with the tigers at the “Tiger Canyon.” There, the animals are chained up and trained to sit quietly while tourists pose next to them. For an extra 1000 baht ($32), you can get your picture taken sitting on a tiger’s back, etc. As Bryan wrote here last week, wild tiger populations across the globe are in dismal shape. Though by some estimates there are over 10,000 tigers in captivity in the U.S. alone, there are less than 3,500 wild tigers in the entire world today. Their numbers have suffered from habitat loss, loss of prey from human hunting, and poaching for their skins, body parts and bones, which are used for medicinal purposes. The same day I visited the temple, an article ran in the Bangkok Post that an enormous wildlife trafficking ring was broken up in Hanoi, a hub for the illegal wildlife trade in Asia. Over 1300 pounds of rare animal bones, including tiger and elephant bones, were confiscated in the raid. The Tiger Temple’s past – and, according to critics, its present — is also linked with the lucrative tiger trade. According to the organization, the first tiger cub arrived at the monastery in 1999 after her mother was killed by poachers near the Thai-Burma border. The cub, too, had been sold to a businessman to … Continue reading Too Close for Comfort: Thailand’s Tiger Temple