Wildlife Wednesdays

The Cruel Business of Mongoose Hair Paintbrushes

The fearsome mongoose. It can fight a cobra, kill a snake with one bite, and keep a farmer’s field clear of mice, rats, and insects.

But to some in India, which is home to six species of the ferret-like animal, they’re valuable in another way. Their fur makes expensive—and illegal—paintbrushes for artists.

As long ago as 1972, India prohibited the hunting, selling, and buying of mongooses and mongoose parts, including their hair, because of overhunting for their fur. Yet the poaching and the black market continue to this day. As recently as August, Indian officials arrested people suspected of smuggling 12 pounds of mongoose hair, the equivalent of more than 130 animals, the New Indian Express reported.

In the early 2000s some 50,000 mongooses—the most recent data available, according to the nonprofit Wildlife Trust of India—were being killed annually. Although we don’t know how many are killed today, experts say the black market continues to thrive.

“The production of mongoose-hair brushes is still ongoing,” says Jose Louies, of the Wildlife Trust of India. “The domestic trade is down, but the international trade is what drives the trade. Mongoose brushes are considered as fine brushes by artists across the world.”

These brushes are sometimes sold directly to buyers in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, and sometimes they’re passed off as sable or badger paintbrushes, which are legal.

Hunting can be brutal business. Indigenous hunters typically trap mongooses using snares or nets and then beat them to death with clubs, according to a documentary the Wildlife Trust of India produced. Hunters pull the fur off the skin, keeping the meat for themselves and selling the hair to middlemen. One mongoose provides a small handful of hair. The middlemen consolidate hair from many villages and sell it to factories to produce paintbrushes.

It can be a large-scale operation. In 2015, Indian law enforcement seized 14,000 mongoose-hair paintbrushes from a distributor in a coastal town of southwestern India, the Times of India reported. They’d been manufactured in the state of Uttar Pradesh, in an area the Wildlife Trust of India has said is home to many brush manufacturers.

(Full Article)

Chaos, Questions Surround Temple as Tigers Seized

Thailand's controversial Tiger Temple is losing its tigers.

The monastery and popular tourist attraction, the focus of allegations of animal abuse and trafficking for 15 years, was raided this week by authorities who planned to remove all 137 tigers held at the temple, three hours northwest of Bangkok.

The tiger attraction gained worldwide attention as a place where visitors could pet, feed, bathe, and walk the cats around on leashes, snapping selfies along the way. It has been a gold mine to the monastery, which is formally known as Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno, bringing in an estimated three million dollars a year.

But conservation organizations and former temple workers have long accused the temple's monks of keeping the cats in jail-like enclosures, feeding them poorly, and physically abusing them. Critics also have accused the temple of trafficking endangered species in violation of Thai wildlife laws and an international treaty. The temple's monks have rejected accusations regarding their care of the tigers, saying they have done nothing wrong. (...)

On Monday Thailand's Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation began removing the tigers, an operation that required about 500 people. On Wednesday, after officials had tranquilized and removed six tigers that had been set loose in the temple's kitchen facilities, they investigated a tip from a temple volunteer and made a stunning discovery.

Inside an industrial-size freezer they found the bodies of 40 frozen tiger cubs, all one to seven days old. 

They’d been dead for no more than two days, said Adisorn Nuchdumrong, the wildlife department’s deputy director. (..)

But at the time the wildlife department lacked the facilities and know-how to care for the tigers, he said, so the monastery was allowed to keep them—with orders not to breed or make money from them. The monks ignored the directive, and the department turned a blind eye. The venue grew into a lucrative tourist hot spot, and by April 2015 the tiger population had soared to 147, according to the wildlife department.

Then, in December 2014, three adult male tigers vanished from the temple, animals that were microchipped and registered with the government. An ongoing, 16-month investigation by local police into the animals’ disappearance has not produced any charges.

Other pending cases against the temple include unlawful possession of sixAsian black bears and 38 rare hornbills and other birds—animals seized by federal wildlife officials in two separate raids in the spring of 2015. Two Asiatic golden jackals and two Malayan porcupines, seen at the temple during an inspection, disappeared before officials arrived to seize them and the birds.

Read more about the Tiger Temple’s crimes