Tiger Temple Visit

Tiger Temple Visit

Kanchanaburi Province

In mid-September a group of Peace Corps friends and I spent the weekend in Sai Yok district, Kanchanaburi Province. My friends were signed up for a half-marathon. My role was to cheer them on and take pictures. The run was on Sunday morning, so we had Saturday to ourselves and chose to visit the Tiger Temple (Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua), about a 90 minute drive from the River Kwai Village Hotel, where the race started.

The Tiger Temple is in a beautiful mountain setting in western Kanchanaburi Province, not far from the Myanmar border. It bills itself as a tiger sanctuary but probably doesn’t meet the standards (more about that later). It’s a place where tourists can get close to tigers and, depending on the option they pay for, have their pictures taken in different poses with tigers. The song teo driver who picked us up in the morning made several people change clothes before leaving – no bright pink, red, or yellow clothes are allowed, since these colors are, you will pardon the expression, a red flag for the tigers. Arriving at the Tiger Temple, we chose the 600 Baht option (30 Baht = $1 US), which includes three different photo ops. (If you are on Facebook, you’ve seen some of these photos already.)

The first chance to take pictures was soon after we entered the canyon where the tigers live. A half-dozen or so tigers had been brought out from the enclosed spaces deeper in the canyon. They wore collars and were chained near trees, napping or just looking bored. The staff (wearing purple shirts) reminded us to keep a safe distance and warned against crouching down to take a picture – this could give the tiger the wrong idea. -- The fact that some employees were crouching doesn't mean visitors can; the tigers know the employees, after all.  These are a few of the pictures I took.

About a half hour later, we were instructed to line up to take turns “walking” a tiger. This time staff members took the pictures, with our cameras. For efficiency, fellow-PCV Yee and I both used my camera. The staff instructed us to hold the leash in our left hand and touch the tiger firmly with our right hand – a firm touch lets the tiger know where you are, and that you are not a fly to be swatted away. Below you see Yee holding a tiger’s leash, with me a few steps behind. Then it was my turn. 

 After taking our turn with the leash, we were led further down into the canyon to where the tigers spend most of their time – they only come out to “work” (i.e., be chained under trees and walk on leashes) from about noon to 1:30pm.  We waited outside the gate (see the picture below) while the tigers were walked, one by one, back down the hill to the enclosure.

A staff member talked to us about the tigers and answered questions while we waited, sitting on benches. Each time a tiger started down the hill, we were told to stand up again, so the tigers wouldn’t think we were some crouching prey or other. After the last tiger had come down the hill, it was time to line up again, share cameras, and pose with half a dozen different tigers. Again the staff members took the pictures, with multiple shots so we could choose the best ones. Here are a few to give you an idea. 

When I saw  these photos, I thought:  Are these the 21st-century replacement for photos of yourself with your foot on the head of an animal you hunted and killed?  Not a comfortable thought, and made me question my participation in the photo ops. As you can see, the tigers are again chained up and appear to be very lethargic. The staff member who spoke while we were waiting for the tigers to come down the hill said several times “The tigers are not sedated,” adding that if they were, they wouldn’t be able to walk steadily.  True.  We wondered, though, if there might not be a technical distinction between “sedated” and “a little something to mellow them out.” The Tiger Temple vigorously denies that the animals are drugged. They explain the tigers’ relative docility by their having been cared for in captivity, as well as the fact that by nature, being cats, they normally sleep about 18 hours a day even in the wild, and are active only when they need to hunt for food or engage in other tiger activities such as mating and caring for young.

Before visiting the Tiger Temple, I had heard many positive things about it, especially from people who had volunteered there. The site depends heavily on volunteers, who sign on for a minimum of one month and a maximum of eight, to perform routine work such as cleaning the tigers’ living spaces, preparing their food, caring for cubs whose mothers have rejected them, and more. After our visit, I started looking more closely into the Tiger Temple’s history and reputation.

According to web sources, the Tiger Temple was founded as a wildlife sanctuary and forest temple in 1994. Boars, buffaloes, deer, peacocks, hornbills, goats, and other animals live there – at the start, there were no tigers. The first tiger was given to the monks to care for in 1999, followed by other rescued tigers who survived and, in the way of things, reproduced. Today there are about 135 tigers at the Tiger Temple, but not all are descendants of rescued animals. A brief video about the Tiger Temple fortuitously appeared in the online Bangkok Post on 22 September, 2014, just as I was finishing this post. It contains some information I hadn't seen anywhere else. Here is the link.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/multimedia/vdo/thailand/433622/the-tiger-temple

I was surprised by the monk's stating that tribesmen had brought tigers to exchange for food, and that some other people may have been "fleeing forestry officials" -- whatever that means; perhaps someone had captured a tiger that they intended to sell, but feared they would be caught? The monk's statements confirm what I had read elsewhere, that there are about 135 tigers there today.

Much to my disappointment, a search for “Tiger Temple” on the web brings up allegations of unqualified staff, abuse of animals, and illegal activities. Concerning staff: it’s probably true that the monks and employees don’t have the training or credentials required for the site to qualify as a wildlife sanctuary. As to whether the tigers are abused – obviously they aren’t free to do as they please, but they are cared for and safe from poachers, at least. By some estimates, poachers kill 100 or more tigers each year for sale on the black market. Selling poached tigers and other wild animals is of course illegal but enforcing the law is not easy. There is an incredibly large demand for tiger parts (skin, teeth, whiskers, sex organs, bones, meat), still much sought-after in some cultures for their supposed medicinal or aphrodisiac effects.

To me, the most disturbing allegations about the Tiger Temple are that it sells tigers to unscrupulous dealers, possibly for further sale, or trades with zoos in countries that do not abide by the same standards as Thailand. For example, one source claimed that the Tiger Temple had traded adult tigers (mostly older males) for cubs to a zoo in Laos (Bangkokbeyond.com). No actual documentation was provided in support of this claim. I hope such allegations aren’t true but I don’t know. It’s also alleged that income from tourists (hundreds of us every day) is being used to finance the building of a new temple at the site. Again, I don’t know if this is true. Certainly a good deal of money goes into maintaining the tigers and the site. The staff told us it costs 500 baht a day to feed just one tiger, and of course thee are many other expenses.

Disappointingly, the Tiger Temple doesn't seem to be an organization that invests part of its income into habitat restoration or other initiatives that could truly help preserve these beautiful animals. Wild tigers are seriously endangered in the few countries where they still exist. Most online sources say there are about 250 wild tigers in Thailand – however, this number isn’t based on scientific data-gathering and anyway, wild tigers don’t recognize national borders, but may go back and forth, e.g., between Kanchanaburi and Myanmar. According to the World Wildlife Fund website, the largest wild tiger habitat on earth is in the forests of the Upper Mekong area (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam). This region may have as few as 350 wild tigers. For more about tigers in the wild, including some grounds for cautious optimism, follow the link below to a 2011 article from The Guardian.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/may/17/thailand-jungles-rising-hopes-tiger

Back to the question of how the tigers are treated at Tiger Temple: Obviously they have to earn their keep by tolerating photo sessions with tourists. On the other hand, in the Bangkok Post video linked above, we see tigers swimming, a favorite activity of theirs, so it's not all work and no play. Some sources allege that they are malnourished. The staff told us the tigers are fed a diet of chicken (cheaper than beef or pork) and nutritional supplements. Is that adequate nourishment? Maybe. The site is criticized for taking baby tigers from their mothers – however, it’s also true that tigers here, like tigers in captivity elsewhere, often reject their babies, so the cubs must be taken away for their survival. One of the activities for tourists at Tiger Temple (not included in the price of our tickets) is to bottle-feed a baby tiger -- a very popular option, as you can imagine.

Let me end this post by describing a few actions I observed during the short time I was at the Tiger Temple. As we entered the area where the tigers were chained, we were startled to see a staff member pulling a tiger’s tail. He seemed to be trying to get the tiger to move into a more photogenic position. I also saw a monk prodding two tigers that were chained near each other – apparently trying to get them to wrestle, but they were having none of it. And here’s a short video I took of a tiger trying to move about, constrained by his chain:

Seeing the tiger like this made me feel sad, as I always feel at zoos where the animals must be confined in uncomfortable-looking spaces. To many people, perhaps including some readers of this post, the treatment of tigers described here is clearly abuse. To other people, including me, it probably doesn’t rise to that level – tail-pulling and prodding are stupid, gratuitous pestering but that’s about all. In saying that, I don't mean to condone such behavior -- if the tiger should choose to take a swipe at one of those guys, I'd be cheering for the tiger.

After all this, I find myself somewhat on the fence about the Tiger Temple. I'm not convinced it's as bad as alleged in various online sources, but I wonder if there aren't some shady dealings here and there (despite the statement of the monk in the Bangkok Post video, that if there was anything illegal, they would have failed long ago). Clearly the Tiger Temple is offering attractive options to thousands of tourists, which is good for Thailand's economy. I think the tigers are pretty well cared for. That leaves the question of whether the Tiger Temple's activities align at all with efforts to foster the conservation of tigers and their habitats. I don't think they do.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are mine personally. They are not the opinions of the Peace Corps, the U.S. government or its agencies, or anyone but me.

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