Thailand's Tiger Temple: Conservation or Exploitation?
If you are in Thailand and you want to see Tigers, chances are you will head out of Bangkok to Kanchanaburi to find the insanely popular Tiger Temple, locally known as Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua. Every day for a couple of hours in the afternoon parades of tourists get the opportunity to get close (how close depends on how big of donation is made) and have their photo taken with the tigers. The Tiger Temple’s general admission allow guests to have close encounters with the animals and have their photos taken near them, its extremely popular extended services allows you to feed baby tigers, as well as bathe and exercise them. For someone looking for an in depth Tiger encounter, this is the place to be. The temple itself was founded in 1994, the first tigers came in 1999, and its gates opened to tourists in the year 2000. According to its website, this Buddhist temple’s founding tigers came from people dropping off animals to their care.
Increased interest came to the temple when it was featured on Discovery's Animal Planet in a two part series.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnOFWkzdF80]
Today the Tiger Temple is thriving; hundreds of visitors a day arrive with a minimum mandatory donation of about $20 USD (600 THB). Donations are to help pay for food, care and a more appropriate habitat for them. Tiger Island, which was under construction in the Animal Planet video above, was recently completed. According to the Temple, its cost was 75 000 000 THB.
The Tiger temple is not without controversy; skeptics and conservationists have spoken negatively about the handling of Tigers at the temple. The most significant outcry has come from Care for the Wild International (CWI) in 2008 a 26 page document, researched from 2005-2008 concluded that the Tigers were kept solely for tourists, as all tigers residing there would never be able to be released to the wild. CWI reported that they believed the temple had been illegally trafficking the tigers internationally (into Laos) to maintain their tiger population. That the animals were mistreated physically and that the tigers have been poorly housed, and improperly fed.
Other websites, links and negative press for the temple can be found here, here, here and here. Although far outweighed by the negative, videos and articles that are positive are also available, such as here and here. In my opinion, CWI’s report consisted mostly of allegations, some based on international feeding/housing standards recommended by zoos for the care of tigers, some as explanations as to why tigers went missing, and to why the temple reused old tiger names with new ones that arrived.
It is important to note that The Tiger Temple has rebutted all negative accounts claimed against it, and has also gone to court over the allegations. Regarding the feeding of the tigers, the temple explains that the animals the tigers are fed with (chickens) are cooked (which goes against zoo recommendations) instead of served raw, due to attempts to prevent the spread of Avian Bird flu.
I would surmise that Tiger Temple is not the sanctuary for abandoned Tigers that it claims to be, that there should be more tranparency to the fact that they are simply a tourist attaraction.
The quest for the authentic travel experience is probably not found at the Tiger Temple. Whether or not it should be included in your vacation is certainly quite debatable. Clearly, the hundreds of tourist who visit daily seem to be okay with their treatment of the tigers. This tourist attraction is one of many examples that the discerning traveller needs to face while on the road. Consideration for the housing and treatment of animals should be an integral part of your decision to visit this and similar places.
With increased development and the decline of natural habitats are tigers better protected in sanctuary's like the Tiger Temple? Is the money raised from tourism helping future generations of tigers, or is it just another business looking to make more of a profit than the conservation?
For further reading, Real Footprints has some suggestions for situations like this one: Top Ten Travel Tips to Keep your next Vacation Sustainable And Authentic.
What do you think about the Tiger Temple? Leave a comment!
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UPDATE: Here is a new post from my visit there!: http://realfootprints.com/2012/12/05/scary-tiger/