Wildlife at Temples… still a major problem

Temples full of wildlife

In Thailand some people have a culture of sending children to the temple that do not obey their parents, dogs and cats are dumped at temples when they have offspring, and believe it or not, even wild animals kept as pets get dumped at temples once they become a burden or threat to their “owners”. There are however some temples running tiger entertainment parks, or small commercial zoos. We get complaints from concerned people on a regular bases, Thai and foreign, with the question if we can help the animals. We currently estimate that at least about 10,000 wild and protected animals are kept at temples around Thailand.

Over the last year we have seen people injured by wildlife at temples due to enclosures not being strong enough, the playing with gibbons, tigers and bears and so on… Temples are just not the right place to keep most wild animals, even-though some of these temples really try to care for the animals.

In many cases we find the monks at temples to be happy to take advise from us to upgrade facilities, or even they demand us to take their animals to our rescue center and further care from them. In some cases however the temples live of donations of these animals, and upgrading the cages and lives of these wild animals would result in less donations from animal loving visitors.

Last week we visited a few temples, of which we would like to show you the photos. In the case of both temples we are fully aware that the temple will not allow us to help the animals, but we will again ask government officials to interfere and enforce the law, to rescue the animals. A petition to ask the Department of National Parks to enforce the law and rescue the animals soonest possible will be put online!