Accordingly, on August 4, the Environmental Police Division under the Nghe An Province Department of Public Security cooperated with specialized forces to check the house owned by Nguyen Van Hien in Nam Vuc Hamlet of Do Thanh Commune in Yen Thanh District. They discovered 14 Indochinese tigers kept in a secluded basement.
Simultaneously, another police team checked the house of Nguyen Thi Dinh in Phu Xuan Hamlet also of Do Thanh Commune and discovered 3 more Indochinese tigers.
The 17 tigers weigh around 200-260 kilos each. They were bought from Laos when being a cub and transported to the two above households to be raised like a pig.
Having finished necessary documents, the functional agencies moved these tigers to Muong Thanh Ecotourism Site in Dien Chau District for healthcare checkup and further care to serve investigation task. Sadly, when coming to this site, eight of them died because of unknown reasons.
Nguyen Van Binh, Head of the Legal Inspector Division (under the Nghe An Province Forest Protection Department) shared that his staff has already paid a visit to those houses but could not detect anything as the basements were too secluded.
Regarding the suspect on the death reasons of the tigers, Vice Chairman of Nghe An Province People’s Committee Hoang Nghia Hieu said that he has not received any report from related agencies yet.
A manager in the Environmental Police Division informed that his organization is now working with specialized agencies to identify the causes of these tigers’ death. Whether it is because of the sedation process or transport cannot be claimed until further analyses are done.
However, a worker in Pu Mat National Park (sited in Nghe An Province) commented from his experience that moving tigers to another location should be done after the tigers inside cages wake up from sedation. In addition, the rescued tigers are too fat. Normally, fat captive tigers must be slimmed down and considered healthy enough before being moved to wildlife rescue centers.
